Fallen King in Name Only
by ME'N7'Fan
Summary: The final hour of Yggdrasil has come, and as predicted the server's clock strikes midnight sounding the end of over a decade of one man's retreat from the horror that is the modern office setting in one of the most draining companies in the western hemisphere. Surprisingly it isn't the end for him as he finds himself in a new world. Obligatory OP-ness later on to keep balance.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One: A Songbird in the City

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Overlord, or any of its related, products, characters, music, or affiliated merchandise. I also do not own any other franchises, series, music, or any other items I may mention in this story in any way much to my chagrin.

Also, a big shout out to my dear ol' dad, Matt (also known by a certain cynical nickname of theirs), some other friends, Minami and Yui, you two know who I'm talking about. They're all getting these mentions for helping iron out some plot issues I've had, not to mention figuring out how to portray portions of a certain group that will be mentioned in the story by allowing me to bounce ideas off of them for those characters and the story in general.

Any further assistance in the form of reviews and personal correspondence will be greatly appreciated, especially if it is constructive criticism, although I do find the occasional outbreak of flames to be a bit helpful for roasting marshmallows when I have them...

Now then, please review, and I hope you enjoy the story (semi-nervous author crosses fingers).

Now then, one game addicted amateur fanfic writer signing off to work on a story I've been letting sit for far too long.

o7 I salute you Ladies and Gentlemen. Also, if you're in the US where I am, I really hope you have the heating set to a comfortable level because it's only going to get colder.

* * *

"It was always dark in here whenever we entered this room, wasn't it LadyRaven?"

"Hai, it always has FallenKing..., I wish this game would keep going, people still came to us to learn from this guild right up until the end. We did have that one guy from PC Gamer Magazine come back for a quick dungeon dive with you and the rest of us since we taught him what he knew about this game, you remember when Watanuki almost burned his character with that fireball spell? Oh, I will miss this game, you're still going to call me when you get home from work right? I mean it's seven in the evening here in Japan, but..."

"Don't worry, I will still call , it isn't like I'm going to let my best friend in the whole world miss the chance to sing a song with me like we normally did on here right?"

I turned my character to the right to look at LadyRaven, she had been there since the start of Yggdrasil from its official release, and her character showed it both in its stats and her appearance. Her character was a female vampire that wore a regal looking dress that had definite ties to the eighteenth or perhaps early nineteenth century which was one of hundreds of thousands of 'Founder' items, and was a powerful magic user like my own since she had long since hit the level cap of one hundred and had practically become something of an item among several social circles with her subtly charismatic but almost aristocratic ways tempered by a wicked and subtle nature directed at anyone that openly made themselves an enemy. She was also the original founder of our guild along with myself, White-Imp, TheNameless1, and Hargrove. She was also perhaps the reason why we were always seen as benevolent teachers first, and powerful adversaries second.

Since many people in the game had a habit of looking down on non-human characters, which often led to discrimination whenever someone needed help of any kind if not outright violence, she had asked all of us if we could do anything about it early on when we first started adventuring together as a group, and I had to admit I was an absolute pessimist and said that we probably couldn't help more than a few, it was TheNameless1 that thought up the idea of trying to tutor people as part of our normal adventuring group originally but it was an idea we all liked. The idea to create the grand Raven's Spire was LadyRaven's alone though, a place where people could come to learn in Yggdrasil, and in the end it was White-Imp's choice of aesthetics that gave us the theme for the great hall and the majority of the Catacombs, but it was all of us that made the tower what it had become.

I watched the female vampire next to me put up her favorite emoji, a simple smiling text bubble, along with the message saying, "I'm so glad to hear that, it will be the lyrics from Arpeggio of Blue Steel's opening song this time!"

I gave the same emote back, along with the reply of, "I'm looking forward to it. It might be an old series, but damn, it is definitely running one of the best songs I have heard in a while with the crap they have been putting out lately."

"Well I better log off Fallen, maybe you'll tell me you're real name when we start singing in the morning?"

My character nodded and I replied the only way I wanted to, "I think I will, you've certainly earned that ages ago back when we were just starting out, I mean after all you did save me after I was duped into that level thirty dungeon when I was only a level thirteen skeletal mage, well that and you wanted to tell me what you thought of your singing, I think I more than owe it to you."

I was met with silence before I saw her favorite emoji again, "I know Fallen, and I know I haven't told you my name either... it's Asaga. I kind of wish we could sing karaoke without using a phone or something..."

"Well I have a month of vacation saved up, do think you could handle having a friend living in a hotel for about a week on vacation?"

"Do you mean it?"

"Yeah, I mean I've always wanted to see Japan since I was a kid, and I've got a cousin of mine that moved there a few months ago that I've been meaning to visit in the spring so it wouldn't be a problem."

"Okay! I'll find a few songs for spring Fallen, ja ne... Lord of Ash..."

I was going to say more but her character winked out of existence in the game, and I knew that I wouldn't see it again either since the servers were shutting down in about five hours. I couldn't help but think of the room I was in, it was absolutely against everything that LadyRaven, no her name was Asaga, imagined since we promoted equality amongst our members. It was a throne room, it was a place meant to show the power of the ruler of our guild, but despite that we did the only thing we could, we elected who would be the leader of the guild and shuffled the role between all of the more permanent members, or at least we did up until a few months ago when people stopped logging on, or slowly began to leave on their own for their own adventures before signing off for the last time. I was the last elected leader then and there was a vote to elect a leader once again but everyone said for me to keep it, and I did under extreme protest as now I was taking after the username I had chosen for myself, I was now a fallen king since my character was undead in origin, a lich to be precise but I always kept something of a noble air about my person and adhered to every single rule we set for our guild as well as I could. By the end of today however there were only two people left in the guild that remained active, myself and Asaga, we kept helping new players and even a few old players going for one last dungeon run right up until now.

I looked around the dark throne room in its dark ambiance, the throne was made out of a wood similar to ebony and stood atop a short platform of grey marble with wrought iron braziers shaped like dragons with their wings stretched toward the ceiling, the floor was made of a reflective white marble tile with a mirror like finish, grey banners that were devoid of any form of heraldry but were adorned with black and white designs meant to draw the eye away from the center of the room adorned the sides of the chamber and covered the grand pillars that were made of a similar white marble to the floor slowly grew darker in color as they reached the ceiling to give way to the rich black marble that the ceiling consisted of black granite enchanted to resemble the night sky.

The only banner that held the image of our guild heraldry was the one above the throne and it was a simple image at that. That image was nothing more than a closed book with an inkwell sitting next to it with a white feather sitting inside of it and a staff laid across the book. It was an accurate enough symbol for our guild after all, since we styled ourselves as more of a place of learning rather than a group of players interested in gaining power over the surrounding land in Yggdrasil, or over any other guilds for that matter. We never chose conflict when we could avoid it, but we did encourage the less experienced members to take part in organized player versus player duel brackets on the tower grounds to give them a taste of combat without putting them in danger of losing anything of value.

The only thing we didn't dare tell anyone about our guild's emblem however was the fact that it actually held the likeness of a World class object, a powerful spell book called the Grimoire of Arcane Might and it was perhaps the most dangerous weapon a magic user could acquire since it didn't require an equipment slot to be used, and its abilities were absolutely devastating in the hands of even a new player but it was something that could destroy entire worlds if it was in the hands of a character devoted to the ways of magical combat if such a feat was possible, and that was due to passive spell immunity to spells tier four and above which essentially made a player untouchable once they reached their seventieth level or so, not to mention the ability to cast any spell instantly as long as it was tier eight or higher with a modest two seconds shaved off of the casting of Super-tier spells regardless of character class.

We had managed to collect a sizable bounty of items and materials from countless hours of farming as a personal source of wealth for our guild, not to mention fighting guilds that decided that a guild that taught new players should be a pushover, and many of our younger members had gained invaluable experience in player versus player combat both by observing the senior members, such as myself since I was one of the founding members and at the time current leader of the Scholars of Ravenspire, and in practical application of the knowledge we passed onto them. In the end however I always regretted not making it more of a priority to try to convince our members to stay after that since we had made ourselves into what equated to a guild where people came to learn to play Yggdrasil and develop their character's skills and stats to suit specific playstyles, meaning they were free to leave when they were finished learning what they required or found somewhere else to go.

In the end it was just myself standing in the throne room with messages of farewell from all of our former members open before me with the simple move to activate my mail inbox, slowly I made my way to the throne with my inbox open and sat down as I began to reread the messages one after another, that was until I came across a message I wasn't expecting. It was a message from Momonga, I read it of course thinking it was an old message that I had overlooked but I saw the timestamp and realized it was only a few minutes old, and without delay I sent a letter in reply stating that it had been an honor knowing them and the members of their guild even if it was for a short time, and that I would hopefully see them in another place or game with luck. I knew that I hadn't been paying attention to the time as I was reading the messages I had received and writing in response to a few, when I saw that it was almost nine in the evening on the server's internal time, meaning there was just three hours left, that was when I had the idea to assemble the most important NPCs from their duties in the tower and its grounds, and since much of the tower itself was actually built under the ground and spread out to cover the surrounding mixture of magically maintained jungle and swamps to the pond and surrounding gardens the NPCs would be either in the ancillary towers near the perimeter of the grounds themselves in the case of the main guardians, or in the tower itself attending to classrooms that would never be filled again with fresh faces for even a second. I however, happened to be a lazy person at heart whenever it came to games I could use developer tools in and chose to activate the NPC command system to summon them, a process that would cause them all to walk to the main hall at the base of the tower which could take up to a half hour considering how their path finding system was devised coupled with how the grounds were laid out.

I decided to take a quick walk by myself to what passed as my personal quarters in the tower, and change into my more 'ceremonial' appearance since this would be the last time I did anything in Yggdrasil. In reality however it was a far less ostentatious robe than the one I normally used, which in fact was a throwback to the very first robe I ever used in Yggdrasil, instead of the gold trimmed and gem studded robe that was a deep crimson meant to inspire feelings of awe in my foes during the few times I was truly required to take the field of battle or perform official duties for the guild. The robe I had equipped to my character was a simple black robe with silver trimmed matching black metal plates over the shoulders with a deep hood to cover my head. I chose this robe because it was the robe I had when I had been first elected to be the leader for the month I was originally intended to be in charge of the guild for. I felt it was appropriate since I also had a similar robe when I first joined this guild as one of its founders, and it evoked warm memories of past conquests, songs of celebration during triumphant returns, lamentations in the mercifully few instances when we were defeated, and the moment I met many of our first members, as well as the finest of our students at their 'graduation' from our guild by simply surviving in a timed duel with Hargrove, our very first students were accepted as our own after all. From then on it was a mad race to assemble a powerful arsenal of items that would be the symbols of our guild and in the end we had the weapons that secured the land from wandering monsters, and players that threatened our fledgling guild and its home.

My staff however was a simple item in terms of classification barely being considered a so-called God level item due to its sheer utility and enchantments making it an effective blunt instrument, as it was created from a gnarled piece of Umbral Yew from the very realm of death itself and it was etched by my character's own hand before being inlaid with five enchanted rubies imbued with powerful defensive magic in the form of passive anti-magic warding that would create a defensive barrier automatically, it did sadly have the unfortunate effect of leaving me open to spells relating to the cold, but then again it isn't like spells dealing cold damage would even be a threat to a Lich such as I after considering my level and natural resistances. My staff had perhaps one truly eye-catching feature however was the engraving created by White-Imp at his suggestion, and ever the artist as usual, he sculpted it over time to resemble the almost common image of the 'Western' depiction of a dragon with its wings spread in flight and its mouth open as if it was roaring with shining rubies set into its chest giving my staff three simple but effective offensive spells, Mist of Flame, Fireball, and Wall of Death. Mist of Flame was perhaps the most deadly of the three, a simple fog that could be cast as a magical trap that would ignite when something passed through a nearly undetectable magical boundary after a second before consuming whatever triggered it so long as it wasn't resistant or immune to a tier eight fire based spell, Fireball was a carbon copy of the tier three spell of the same name so it was a simple but effective tool meant to save mana, and Wall of Death was perhaps the most dangerous item effect I had after Mist of Flame since it acted like an extremely aggressive version of Anti-life Cocoon that would cause living beings to rot as if exposed to the spell Eternal Decay instead of simply blocking them, but it did that too making it probably one of the more dangerous barrier spells since enemies could pass through it, not that they would live long at any rate.

Then there was my robe of course since I personally enchanted it to the best of my ability, it was called the Robe of Shadows, its appearance was that of a black traveling cloak with some minor ornamentation in the form of the metal plates formed into protective covering for the shoulders as well as silver embroidery along the edges of the hood, sleeves, and a few gemstones holding warding magic to obscure my undead nature by various forms of magic including the ability to cover my face with extremely deep shadows to prevent my face being seen but the enchantments also to helped by warding off physical attacks in conjunction with my own innate resistance to necromantic spells such as Ray of Negative Energy since that spell would serve to strengthen me instead of harm me due to my undead racial abilities. Sadly proper healing spells meant for the living were considered a 'holy attack' when utilized on the undead so the majority of my robe's defensive enchantments were meant to nullify holy magic of any kind along with a few other more minor bonuses to speed up the time to cast my more basic spells belonging to tiers three and lower since some magical defenses could only be breached by lower tiered spells. My rings were more or less for decoration beyond bolstering my already considerable pool of mana points, aside from the fact that the rings served as a wearable mana potion to restore my mana points at any time by 'consuming' the built up magical charge they collected from a variety of sources, but my Guild Ring was essentially meant to safeguard half of the wearer's mana points against draining attacks, and the ability to teleport around the Tower and its grounds.

The amulet I wore was a gift from Hargrove, he was another Lich that focused on the bloody chaos of melee combat in direct contrast to my own choice of ranged spellcasting despite him having a personality mirroring my own, but he did take the time to focus a lot of his time on developing his racial abilities and saw that hordes of small flying creatures served as an effective distraction against ranged opponents, so he had taken the time to acquire the necessary skills to create amulets for all of our original adventuring party before we created our guild, the amulets were an item able to summon a horde of bats ranging into the thousands meant to harass archers and other ranged combatants by slowly whittling away at their hit-points, of course creative use of such an advantage was always found in PVP combat and the name of the amulet in question was something I could never remember but it had something about wings in its name.

The boots I wore were purely for aesthetic purposes and were unnamed, after all it would be in poor taste to not have a pair of black travelling boots that matched the already grim look black robe if they weren't meant for traveling at all. My equipment was always being joked about by the other members of the guild in private conversations I'm sure since I preferred the use of lower leveled items over my more powerful equipment, but I focused solely on my character's abilities and spells as well as my own skill to carry the day and not my equipment but I always made sure that they offered the same protection that the other founders of my guild had which left me as more or less a walking nightmare to anyone below level eighty, and an equal if they were ninety or higher where skill and raw power were what mattered.

I found myself looking into the mirror mounted on the inside of my personal wardrobe for far longer than I should have as I lost myself in more memories as I pulled each item from my wardrobe before eventually starting to hum a little tune I had heard somewhere long ago. I knew my character couldn't smile, but I so desperately wanted to have it mirror the expression I knew I was undoubtedly wearing subconsciously outside of Yggdrasil but I settled for the brighter glow in the glowing cobalt blue orbs set into its eye sockets. I looked at the in-game clock and saw that I had just less than an hour left but I just couldn't turn away from the sight of my character as he stood in the mirror, I kept the build of his body slightly average but leaned toward a thinner appearance overall in the hopes to make my character seem like less of a threat than they really were, and as many of my opponents in the past could attest it was a fatal assumption to make based on appearance alone in combination with the Robe of Shadows. My character had quite the horrifying appearance, but then again so did everyone who used a non-human character like a Lich for the most part as long as they had made an earnest attempt with their time in the creation of their character. I stood there for a few minutes longer before utilizing the guild ring that I wore to teleport to our guild's Great Hall.

I finished the transit to the Great Hall without issue, and I saw the assembly of no less than ten of the major NPC's belonging to what equated to my second home for nearly all of Yggdrasil's twelve year long life. The two Vampires, Nidus the Eternal, Melena the Night Stalker, and then of course the Lich Harald the Shadow Weaver, each were level ninety and all of them were powerful melee combatants due to their racial abilities in tandem with an odd assortment of equipment, but Nidus served as the head of the main defensive NPCs and was created by Asaga as a powerful barrier against intruders with the staying power of a level eighty warrior and a level twenty magic user, Melena was the secondary leader of the 'counter-offensive' troops with her incredible abilities intended to simply annihilate the enemy either in direct magical confrontation or as an infiltrator, and last was Harald. He was a collaboration by all of the founding members of our guild including myself, and Harald was the result of trying to create a powerful illusionist with a heavy focus on defensive spells, Harald was head of the NPCs that assisted in educating our members in magical defense and to a lesser extent magic meant to conceal oneself from spells meant to gather information. Then there was Illyana, a Dark Elf who was in charge of what could be argued was the main 'offensive' force, in short they were similar to the defensive NPCs except they were all of varying high level magic users and their various sub-classes allowing them to temporarily deal with actual players, but they were meant to supplement our members in an attack instead of replace them entirely.

Uthgar was a phantom, human in origin, that was bound to the small smithy that I myself had created several items in as one of the jobs I needed to take in order to create magical items during what would be considered 'end game' status as I neared level ninety, funnily enough the smithy was bought from another guild after an event in Yggdrasil that allowed randomly generated spirits to attach themselves to important guild objects, which most guilds didn't take kindly to while our guild simply warded the most important guild objects with protective spells that would reduce the chances of it happening and then hoped for the best as the hauntings were entirely random in what they attached themselves to, which oddly enough led to several ghostly caretakers for the tower grounds which cut overall maintenance since they didn't incur additional upkeep costs, but the private library we had was sadly not included in that list of warded areas which led to some rather annoying consequences.

The other NPCs however I couldn't remember offhand with the exception of the unnaturally tall and intelligent goblin that was the head butler, he was the de facto leader of the housekeeping staff, and almost all of said housekeepers were high level thieves and assassins to get their powerful stealth abilities put to good use to appear from nowhere despite their non-human origins in some cases. The head butler's name was Vargrim, a very old goblin that looked more like an elf than a goblin due to his overly pointed features, but that was where the similarity ended since his green and withered flesh seemed stretched and thin compared to what a normal goblin should look like, his eyes were sunken in ever so slightly but the yellow glow that seemed to radiate from within those malevolent eyes as he went about his duties when passing through dimly lit areas belied the reason he was a very powerful thief of level eighty with enough job classes thrown in to make it easily accepted as to why he was the head butler, then again his innate ability to disappear from sight only to reappear elsewhere, and in one case stab a level seventy fighter in the back with a pair of long talon-like daggers that dropped their hit-points to practically nil along with a lingering curse that prevented them from retaliating, and last I heard they never did get it removed. Overall the goblin was also nearly tall enough to come up to my waist, which considering how disproportionately large my character was to a normal skeleton would have had him standing at nearly five and a half feet tall if he stood upright instead of hunched over ever so slightly as he normally was in the loose fitting coat he wore.

I stood there admiring the culmination of the countless hours my friends and I had poured into perfecting how each character's gear and looks interacted so they matched their personalities. Nidus was a serious and generally stoic character with little imagination when it came to humor so his plain grey armor was devoid of decoration, Melena was a quiet individual but decisive in her responses lending her the necessity to have a very heavily enchanted robe along with a staff that was more of a trick than anything else, Harald was a bit grim but it was matched by solid determination according to his stats and settings which was matched with black robes similar to mine with more than a few of the same personality quirks I have, Illyana was energetic and forward thinking with a well developed strategic AI and it showed whenever her NPCs were utilized on the offense or defense leaving her with a robe that was bright and cheerful with a cuirass of adamantite with sleeves of chainmail covering her robe's own cloth sleeves.

Uthgar was the only real oddity since they were generally giving off a depressive aura but nonetheless was quite inspiring whenever someone was forging an item in the smithy, even going so far as showing off his ability to forge items on his own as an NPC and often they were of superior quality of near Legendary rating for his simple items, but he had the innate ability to duplicate any item's effects to any extent as long as it was equal to or less effective than the item he was copying, often he would appear to be wearing tattered clothing that would shift about on some undetectable phantom wind. Waiting a moment longer I realized I had around a half hour left before the servers would shut down, and without delay I gave the simple order to follow and I began to lead the NPCs that helped us keep the guild I called home a functioning, and the thriving place I cherished, on one last walk around the Tower itself from room to room before taking them to the Throne Room for one last moment of reflection before the inevitable end of twelve short years of memories I wouldn't give up for the world.

I hated how time seemed to fly by whenever I got distracted, it reminded me too much of my real-life job.

I stood in the Throne Room for barely a minute before I did something I thought was absolutely insane after an odd notion stirred in my mind, I started to give a speech and looked around the Throne Room one last time with the assembled NPCs in their normal standby positions.

"For nearly twelve years this grand tower was our home, we are family in my eyes. LadyRaven was the mother of this great family, and the rest of us took our turns being bickering siblings and responsible guardians as we normally did, but I can honestly say that I was humbled to say that this was perhaps the most important thing I had for over a decade. I had friends here, I had challenges here, I could help people reach the height of their own potential if they gave me the time to help them do so, and for almost a decade I wanted nothing more than to have it last forever but as all things must end so too must this end. I hope we will all meet again soon my friends."

I felt myself begin to lose part of my composure as the time left until the servers finally shut down was less than a minute away since I took the briefest of routes that took nearly all of the half hour I had left before reaching the Throne Room, and several minutes remembering the events of the past took far longer than I would have liked, and being lost in a flight of fancy leading to a speech that was essentially unnecessary beyond how it helped me cope with losing somewhere I met with friends I had never met in person for over a decade in one specific case, and other friends I would more than likely never see again. My external composure was probably fine, but the internal chaos of my mind was completely out of control as the server's clock hit zero and my character began to slowly slip toward the ground to their knees just as the clock read 00:00:00.

* * *

So there I was sitting on the floor resting on my knees as my mind was reeling from the loss of friends, friends that while I truly never met them beyond Yggdrasil I still knew them, and they knew me well enough that both they and I could react to situations in an instant as we moved across the myriad dungeons we had entered over twelve years like a well maintained machine could effortlessly continue the task it was designed for with minimal complaint while receiving proper maintenance. I felt like sobbing, Hell, I felt like bawling my eyes out as I reached out to activate the command console and when it didn't respond as I expected I stopped as a weight was placed on my shoulder. I looked to where I felt the weight since it struck me as odd since touch was a sensation that wasn't able to be implemented in Yggdrasil and I saw the white glove belonging to White-Imp's favorite NPC, Vargrim and despite his choice to make them so unnerving in appearance Vargrim had the aura of being a grandfatherly individual but my mind was being wracked by a flurry of doubts and questions. How am I able to feel an NPC touching my shoulder, moreover the very action itself was not an NPC function or animation. To top it off I was becoming keenly aware of the hard, cold marble flooring beneath my knees.

I muttered quietly, "This can't be real..."

"My Lord, I assure you that this is real."

I stood there reeling from a surge of panic, despair, disbelief, and quite possibly excitement. I just wish that I knew what to say.

"My Lord, what is the matter? Is something in the tower not to your liking?"

"Vargrim, you can talk?"

I watched as Vargrim sighed and stepped back before speaking again, albeit with polite frustration evident in his expression similar to how a parent would gently push their child into behaving according to what they were taught for being in a social setting.

"I am not certain I know how to answer your questions Lord. Well I do but yes, I can talk, but can you get off of your knees? It is unseemly for a man of your position."

I watched him as I was unsure of what to say next but what I heard from him was at the very least comforting considering this situation, I wanted to give in to what I felt which was despair, and perhaps frustration because I felt helpless in this situation as I tried to bring up the system to contact a GM only to receive no answer.

"My Lord, I would like to say that from what we have all seen and heard during the last few minutes, we are happy to see that one of the beings that created us stayed here with us to what you perceived as the end, but we are saddened to see that only one of you did so, however, we are here and will continue our duties as instructed. Perhaps you should think of this as a new start?"

I watched him tilt his head to the side with a rather uncharacteristic smile that stretched his features to nearly disturbing proportions for the normally non-expressive butler my friends and I had known for over a decade.

"After all my Lord, if we didn't we wouldn't be fulfilling our roles as residents bound to the tower, and to be honest I rather enjoy my role as head butler, and I believe that you, and the rest of our creators put a piece of your own lives into us to bring us to life, that is a debt we can only hope to repay. So, doesn't it sound like a good reason to get up and find something to do?"

I had to be going insane because I was kneeling on the floor listening to an NPC giving me a philosophically sound reason to stop sulking like the emotionally fragile person I was in reality, and I had to say they made a compelling statement considering my emotional state. Slowly I got to my feet and took in a breath before letting out a heavy sigh that simply created a heavy aura of despair similar to my own feelings about what was happening, were my friends alright? Was I going to be missed? What about my job? What about my promise to sing songs with Asaga? What if I wasn't going insane, because if I'm not going insane what am I supposed to do?

"Yes, I suppose so..."

There was silence after I had replied and it dragged on for some time as I thought about what could have happened, and about what is happening. So I did the only thing I could, I focused on what I could solve right now, and that was figuring out what was going on, and laying the groundwork to eventually reverse it if I could.

"Vargrim?"

I watched as the smartly dressed butler straightened his back to be at what could only be described as something similar to what you could expect when a military officer inspected their troops stood at full attention. It was an impressive sight coming from a butler, but the shallow smile and excited look in his eyes as he expected orders dulled the image, only slightly however as it reminded me of an eager devil as it was intended by White-Imp.

"I want you to ensure that the household staff takes inventory of any and all foodstuffs currently available, perishable or not, I also require you to ensure that the Catacombs are still beneath the tower grounds. Melena, you along with your most trusted are to begin searching the area for anything that may be useful, as I am honestly at a loss to what is going on at the moment, and above all else do not engage in a conflict if it can be avoided, I know you enjoy the occasional hunt and frankly it is none of my business but I am asking you to subsist on the gifts of LadyRaven for as long as I tell you. Of course if you run into anything in the area... well, I don't need to tell you that you need to remain undetected. Uthgar, I would request that you take inventory of the smithy as well as the armories and barracks. The rest of you are to ensure the safety of the grounds, and provide assistance or support where it is needed should it not interfere with your other daily duties."

I watched as the majority of the assembled NPCs, no they were people I suppose considering the emotional responses some of them had, some gave a bow with several offering various forms of acceptance of my orders ranging from simple responses like 'Yes sir', to 'Yes my Lord', and it felt so surreal as they left the Throne Room. I was going to turn to the throne itself so I could sit and think, but I saw Vargrim was still in the room giving a sly smile.

"My Lord, I am pleased that a bit of encouragement brought you to your senses, and don't worry my Lord, we will do what we can to help you perform whatever you wish but I ask that you consider this situation carefully in the event that you decide to leave as well for whatever reason you may have, I mean that it wouldn't be the same without someone that we understand sitting upon the Black Throne."

* * *

It was nearly dusk and now I had an idea of where we were, we were in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere, Melena's report confirmed a great deal of what the majority of her troops could tell me considering they numbered barely forty in total without counting herself among them which severely limited the amount of information they could acquire in a few hours, although it was balanced by the fact that Melena could summon her household to do a fair amount of the scouting with her familiars and handmaidens. Sadly it did leave us with a rather detailed idea of what surrounded our tower.

The tower and its grounds were now squarely located on a small plateau on he side of a mountain range that was possibly made from our arrival in this new area, but it was still considerably larger than the tower grounds and it was only made more pronounced with the fact that the region surrounding us was a massive jungle to one side bordered by the mountains we found ourselves sitting on with an area of soft stone that we could potentially carve a road utilizing physical means if needed. The other issue however was that we were now located on what was possibly a large peninsula that was either located on the coastline of a large lake which was discovered to be saltwater due to one of the human scouts in Melena's troops that had taken a tentative sip before spitting it back into the rest of the water so that meant it we may even possibly be on a large island surrounded by seawater in the worst scenario possible. The mountains nearest the coastline were surrounded by loamy soil before giving way to exceptionally white sand, but at least we knew that all of the tower and its grounds had made the transition to wherever we are. Everything beyond the perimeter cobblestone pathways that went from each ancillary tower to the ones next simply disappeared during our tower's transition, and it truly disturbed many of the NPCs that usually ran the patrols, but at least the Catacombs remained intact during transition, since according to Vargrim everything from the wine cellars to the tombs that the vampiric NPCs rested in during the daylight hours had survived our less than expected situation. The first things that had been checked however was the kitchen larders which had somewhere around three tons of both naturally and magically preserved food, and around one ton in what could be considered 'adventuring' foodstuffs, which in reality was preserved or cured food such as jerky, canned or jarred vegetables, and lastly to my great surprise the few orchards that were added to cut down some maintenance costs in Yggdrasil thankfully still produced a steady stream of produce, albeit slowly despite magic and the constant care of the groundskeepers.

The real problems however were entirely centered around the more important items such as crafting materials for alchemical uses as well as the creation of new equipment for just the NPCs dedicated to combat roles, crafting resources were truly a minor issue when compared to what could happen if anyone nearby saw the tower and reported our location to someone that would use that information against us in one way or another. The first solution for the problem came from Harald since he was the most well versed in magic and it was obviously the best choice since the tower itself held fifteen floors, ten of which were above ground and made it quite easy to spot from a distance if one knew where to look so the solution that Harald suggested was that we cast an illusion to make the tower appear to be a spire of stone jutting from the mountainside and additional illusions to mask the appearance of the plateau, he did however mention that a full illusion would be difficult so that left us with the choice of modifying the plan. However the only way to do so was to actually see what was exposed from the base of the mountains, in the forest, from the coastline, and most importantly from the road that Melena and her household had discovered. If all went well we would only have to hide part of the tower from the road and forest, since most of the coastline was far enough away to make seeing the tower difficult but sadly not impossible.

The only other problem however was of utmost importance, I was bored out of my mind considering that I had yet to leave the Tower for more than a simple walk through the grounds but that never did anything for me back in Yggdrasil since I always did something be it just running a dungeon for fun or to help another player, or maybe even the odd friendly duel with someone to keep my PVP skills sharp. With that said I really wanted to get out of the tower grounds and possibly even attend to see the tower from the road discovered by Melena, for all I knew I would get lucky and meet some friendly locals.

* * *

I opened a portal using the Gate spell, it was simple enough to utilize but it required the utilization of a reconnaissance spell for me to cast it since I hadn't been anywhere near the road yet. It was a requirement for a spell such as Gate or Teleportation since I didn't know if it would work the same way as it did in Yggdrasil, but that was only due to the fact I had to have previously been somewhere or could see where I wanted to go directly. I had to admit I wasn't surprised to see the rapidly shifting disk of black and purple light as it began to dissipate, as it looked quite similar to how it worked in Yggdrasil but in direct contrast to when it was a game mechanic I could feel the unnatural pulses of energy created from its very existence as it drained Mana Points before it slowly tapered off from a feeling of slowly tiring, to a persistent nagging sensation at the back of my mind before disappearing both physically, and metaphorically, within a few seconds after the portal finally became little more than a brief flicker of oily smoke that dissipated into nothingness just as the drain on my Mana finally ceased.

All that was left for me to do now was take a really long look at the mountains and see if I could spot the Tower from the road, which according to what I saw from where I was standing, the road gave any travelers using it a rather good view of the mountains but thankfully didn't reveal the existence of the Tower from where I stood, but that didn't mean much if it was able to be seen from further up the road in either direction so that meant that travelling on foot was a must, a welcome distraction from the boredom of being cooped up inside of what equated to a massive school staffed by a wide variety of former NPCs carrying an almost obsessive desire to perform tasks. What little time I had spent alone in the Tower when I wasn't planning out solutions to immediate problems was dedicated to figuring out what abilities I had in Yggdrasil actually worked, and after spending most of a day listening to the constant droning buzz of a disconnect signal for about an hour and then experimenting with offensive and defensive skills before going over list after list of what Vargrim had inventoried from the various stores ranging from the main kitchen's larder to every last candle and dustpan in the various storage closets I was more than merely eager for something as relaxing as a really long walk.

After all, life was full of challenges and I was really, really, really bored after running through what seemed to be an endless list of spells to the point that even a random low level monster would have been a pleasant change of pace in comparison to the seemingly endless testing I had performed on various targets specifically designed for trying new spells and equipment. There was however a smell that brought back many memories of my childhood... it was a mix of burning wood, coal and possibly oil, and my least favorite smell, filth similar to a busted sewer line.

Without thinking further on the matter I had another skill to check, and in order to do that I simply raised a hand to my head and concentrated on a single word, and that word was message and beyond that it was ensuring that I thought of the recipient since I had tested the skill over short distances back at the Tower with her as the initial test subject.

 _ **"Melena, do you hear me?"**_

I was almost pleased when I heard the silken voice of Melena echo through my mind in response to my use of the Message skill.

 ** _"My Lord, what may I do for you?"_**

 ** _"Well, first you can stop calling me 'My Lord' when we're in private or conversing like this."_**

 ** _"You're wish is my command my Dark Liege..."_**

I wanted to hit my head against something right after hearing that while thinking bitterly, _"You're far too literal Melena, you know that right?"._

 ** _"Melena, don't call me anything relating to a noble title or my position again when we are in private."_**

 ** _"Yes my Lie-... Of course, but I don't have a name to call you by unless you want me to call you FallenKing, and I am unsure if you want to be called that all the time. It is after all related to what you just told me not to call you."_**

I let out a sigh of annoyance because despite her apparently literal nature, she had a point, and it was one that I would have to remedy with an old name I used on another RPG that had served as an inspiration for creating my character on Yggdrasil, with the exception that the character using that name became a Baron by right of conquest, knighthood, and deed.

 ** _"I have a name that you may call me if you wish, but I warn you that it is not my real name."_**

 ** _"I do not understand why you would tell me a false name, but I won't ask why. What is it that you wish to be called?"_**

 ** _"I wish to be called Dreisen, and if I end up in a situation that requires titles I will be addressed as Dreisen, Lord of Ravenspire, will that be acceptable to you Melena?"_**

 ** _"I believe it sounds quite fetching, but why are you asking me what I think of it?"_**

 ** _"Melena... I was interested in your opinion, but I suppose that I will get an answer about that later... I will contact you if I need your assistance."_**

I could almost hear an intrigued 'hmm' sound but it was more than likely a figment of my imagination so I waited a few seconds for a reply, and after waiting for what seemed like an eternity of endless hesitation I finally heard an eager reply, _**"I understand Dreisen, and I shall begin to notify the others of your wishes as well."**_

 _ **"Thank you Melena, do make sure that no one makes a mess of things while I'm gone."**_

There was a pause before I could practically hear the smile that was undoubtedly on her face along with a lilting note of excitement at the prospect of doing something, and it made me shiver without a reason as to why, _**"Of course, I am eager to please~..."**_.

That was when it hit me, she was enjoying the conversation far too much for my liking considering I just want to get home.

* * *

I was faced with a decision, go toward the coast, or go further inland, and with the wind blowing ever so slightly I could catch the faint essence of manure and the scent of something burning from somewhere further within in the jungle, or perhaps it was actually a forest since some of the trees seemed to be from a more temperate climate compared to what began to feel like a sweltering heat that was a persistent but faint annoyance as if I felt the world through a thick wool cloth in regards to my sense of touch.

I looked ahead with a heavy sigh at the prospect of walking the whole way and began a slow and methodical trek up the road before I began to see a small building off to my right through the odd mix of trees, and I heard the sound of horses as they began to move about frantically as if something had spooked them. That was when I heard the voices, there were four of them, three of them were very loud and excited leading me to believe they belonged to children with a few shrill screams of joy and laughter. The fourth voice however piqued my interest since it was mature and was a rather articulated soprano as she called out in a language I could understand, it was surprisingly in what I thought was similar to Romanized Japanese which I could thankfully speak, albeit poorly in this since it sounded a lot like one that Asaga had attempted to teach me so I could sing a folk song with her for a contest for a winter festival in Yggdrasil, sadly I never could get the inflections for some words correctly without sounding horrible and occasionally making a very impressive mistake. Picking up the pace slightly I reached the edge of a clearing that was slowly making itself known with thinner foliage on the road's sides, and in it was the building I noticed through the foliage. The building as it turned out was one of several, a smaller outhouse that was large enough to be considered a shed, another that appeared to be a stable since there was a small enclosure made of a fence that came up to perhaps the neck of the horses inside the pen, and then there was a single story house that would have been considered a luxury in Japan according to what Asaga had mentioned in a past conversation, and considering it looked to be around a thousand square feet and had clear glass windows, it's owner must have been at least relatively well off in terms of wealth back home, but from what I knew history I remembered about the Feudal era in Europe let alone Japan glass was very rarely used unless it was either stained and used in the construction of a very important building like a church, or someone was very important or wealthy.

All of those were plausible, but then again I could be very wrong and that this was a typical farm, but considering that I hadn't noticed much on the lines of crops aside from a small garden partially hidden behind the shed I immediately began to wonder what they did for income. I probably would have kept thinking on those lines as I kept walking past trying to decide if it was worth stopping and knocking on the door of the house but I didn't get the chance as I heard what I knew was a formal greeting from my left side, and that was when I noticed the woman with a long handled axe laid across her right shoulder and arm with an armful of wood under her left.

She was far enough away to keep her features from being too obvious but she was close enough for me to notice she would have been rather attractive, and the dirty clothes she wore were definitely not what a woman would wear if she was expecting company as she was wearing a bright blue dress that showed she had definitely been cutting wood due to the large dark spots near her neck and arms that were probably caused from sweat, which only reinforced the impression the axe and bundle of wood she carried had suggested.

"Hello traveler! What brings you out my way?"

When she spoke I could hear uncertainty and more than a bit of caution, I personally wasn't going to allay any of her mistrust since living out in the middle of nowhere was quite obviously not a safe thing in any situation. I did however attempt to reply as best I could, but I knew that my use of the language was going to be broken, and more than likely I wouldn't be able to ask some of the questions I needed answered.

"I am new to these lands and I haven't been here very long. I don't suppose you could ask for your assistance in getting to town...?"

 _"Very smooth moron, if she doesn't believe that then she's going to immediately be on her guard and won't tell you anything."_

"That won't be a problem," the woman points to her left with her eyes and a point of her chin, "...that way is the crossroad, you need to take the road to the right to get to Port Mantrus, but if you're heading to Xiuhpilli you need to take the cobblestone road to the left with the intention of having a four day journey through the Plaguelands since you're on foot, and I really suggest you don't do that because of the Undead Burg."

I though for a moment before deciding to ignore the port city for now, but Xiuhpilli sounded rather interesting.

"Thank you my lady, and I would be lying if I knew much about the country. Would I be able to perhaps ask you what type of services are available in Xiuhpilli?"

She paused before answering, "Oh my, you really are a stranger in these lands, aren't you?"

She smiled, "Well the biggest attraction in Xiuhpilli is the city itself aside from the main market area, a hundred vendors, and probably half as many artisans from all over the world are there too. I suppose the best attractions there would be the new tavern, the _Arms of Midnight_ and then of course there would be Master Magnus' magic bazaar, he sells the best magic items for leagues around unless you went to the Dwarven colonial islands an hour's sea travel to the North. Magnus is also teaching Chandra, my eldest daughter, how to use magic so that's always worth looking at if you happen to be a budding magic user!"

I could tell she was quite happy living here from her early body posture coupled with a relative look of being pleased, but I was getting too much information too fast as I was starting to tune her out because she was also talking in rapid, excitable bursts of information after she mentioned her daughter, or at least tuning her out had been my intent before I heard yet another voice.

"Naomi, do you want me to bring anything back from town when I bring your daughter back at the end of the week..?"

An involuntary turn of my head revealed a woman with surprise in her voice, but a white porcelain mask covered her face while a richly embroidered robe dyed a sky blue hid her body from view, but the wind shifted so it was coming from her direction and I caught an all too familiar scent from my teenage years, one that had left me with haunting images of hazel eyes, and the short hair of a long legged brunette that I had dated for months before I had finally tucked it away in the long forgotten memories since it ended in the same way most of my relationships had. It was a pungent mix of what smelled like lavender, sandalwood, and another scent that caressed the senses with a warming sensation before fading like a pleasant dream I could no longer remember. This was definitely someone that knew how to attract attention in a social setting if the mask didn't do it for her.

"I didn't realize you had a visitor Naomi, I can come back later if needed."

"It's fine Aisha, he is just passing through but he's a little lost. Maybe you can take him into Xiuhpilli with you?"

I watched as the masked woman turned her head in the first woman's direction and spoke in a cheery voice that caught me off-guard, but the way her words were articulated reminded me of my cousin, a woman that was far too kind for her own good. This woman sounded like others could manipulate her just as easily as my sister was if they tried.

"I'll help him Naomi, but I am afraid I can't give him lodging though..."

I took a moment to state that I was more than capable of handling my own affairs once I made it to town, but I did feel a bit of tact was in order.

"Excuse me my lady, but I am quite capable of providing for my own lodging once I get to Xiuhpilli, although I imagine a hired guide would be useful.", bowing slightly I then added, "I do hope you would be willing to show me around the city."

A soft chuckle escaped from behind this Aisha's mask, "I was about to make you such an offer actually. I hope you don't mind riding on the same wagon as I however, most people don't like me around them."

I eyed her with suspicion from beneath my robe's hood.

"I don't see why they would my lady, after all you do seem to be quite nice."

"That's actually what I don't understand. People don't trust men or women in masks to begin with, a magic user less so if they are also a merchant."

Just like that a few things immediately popped to mind, and they were all questions I would need to ask in private or at the very least in her shop, assuming what she said was a confession in regards to her profession.

"I think I would like to see your shop, perhaps you have something I may find to be of interest for my collection."

Aisha hesitated before asking, "What do you collect?"

"I collect many things, books, artifacts, weapons, armor, interesting crafting materials..., basically if I find something I like, I will most likely add it, especially if it is rare or unique."

"Oh, then I think you should take a look at my shop because I've got all kinds of things from my adventuring days!"

I appreciated the fact she was willing to show me whatever items she has for sale, but I really didn't think she fit the label of being an adventurer.

"You used to be an adventurer?" I chuckled, "Well, I think I would love to hear a tale or two on the road to Xiuhpilli, if you're willing to share."

What felt like a solid minute of silence ensued, and I could hear everything around me because of it. The sound of the wind rustling leaves and fabric, the animals nearby, and the children running the background as I started to zone out. I was also only faintly aware of the two women talking, Naomi however was yelling.

"YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TELL HIM ABOUT THAT TIME IN RE-ESTIZE ARE YOU?!"

"Eh?! Of course not, what you did with Victor isn't going to be brought up even if it is funny!"

* * *

After sitting through an almost lighthearted comedy of an argument for the better part of an hour I was now sitting in the back of a wagon, it had a small driver seat, and a shallow box that was maybe two feet deep. The only good thing about the cart in general was that it was at least a smooth ride aside from the odd issue with the road, and two hours into the ride to Xiuhpilli and an equal number of stops to rest the horse pulling Aisha's cart I was officially beginning to suspect that we might get there somewhere in the middle of the night, and according to Aisha it is going to be around dusk when we will finally get to the city's outlying farmlands.

My only complaints, which I had been keeping to myself, were that the stories I've been listening to have been less than entertaining, or informative. I attempted to steer the conversation toward Xiuhpilli, but every time I did Aisha politely dodged the question with the all too common phrase 'You'll see when we get there.' before I managed to get her to tell me a bit about the Coatl. I was however rather surprised by the description, lizardmen, very intelligent and agile lizardmen with a more compact body build who had control of an empire spanning an entire archipelago with a thriving trade relationship with a dwarven colony on another island to the North, a continent to the south ruled by a so-called vampire nobility, and another area on the same landmass controlled by more powerful undead such as King Angor's 'Eternal Kingdom'.

It was shortly after her mentioning a treaty that existed between the Coatl and the Lich, King Angor that I truly started taking interest in the Coatl empire, or more accurately what Aisha said about them. The treaty was called the Accord of Graves, it secured the purchase of the swamp outside of Xiuhpilli's provincial borders for use by a handful of powerful nobles from the King Angor's lands for anything they desired, which currently resulted in a small outpost, and an impressive smelting complex that the Coatl melted iron down and sent a quarter of the production as a liquid currency to pay for the use of the facility, and the rest of the treaty boiled down to mutual defense along with a surprisingly well laid out list of rules for conducting warfare in a civilized manner, even going so far as to include how to handle political prisoners among other things. The interests the Coatl had were widespread but mostly focused on what could only be described as a Roman mindset coupled with a true nationalistic zeal among their elite troops few could match. Then there were their resources, gemstones like rubies, emeralds, and turquoise were surprisingly abundant in the archipelago we were on seconded in abundance only to iron, gold, silver, adamantite and a variety of other metals like copper. Then of course there was the fact that the Coatl didn't worship any deity in particular but had a form of ancestor worship, and to top that off the city of Xiuhpilli was apparently the first city founded by the Coatl's ancestors and a national hero, a warlord that the city itself was named after.

Their culture was ruled by an oligarchy of sorts except it essentially had two houses of representatives in place to rule it, the High Council which was a collection of influential citizens ranging from generals to mages who had the initial say in government policy, and then the Senate would vote on the matter leading to a bureaucratic nightmare which was usually stopped by a single elected representative agreed upon by both the Senate and the High Council that essentially took on the role of an emperor with none of the perks aside from wealth, and respect if they were doing a good job, but realistically they had little power beyond being a figurehead unless special needs arose like being thrown into a war.

As I continued to sit in the back of the wagon conversing with Aisha as she urged the horses on, I kept finding comparisons between Earth, and wherever I found myself now. Tales of power struggles, greed, and war all intermingling with a backdrop of fragile peace and prosperity maintained by the likes of adventurers paid by local officials all worked to create a stage for the great game that was everyday life in the world. It made me nostalgic for my management job in my nice cushy office job at my company's main office branch where I only had to worry about burying myself in the endless paperwork that was sent my way or perhaps the occasional phone call, all before shuffling home in a crowded subway tunnel and a dreary walk to a cozy little one bedroom apartment barely bigger than my college dorm room. I wasn't exactly thrilled to see the comparisons to everything back home outside of Yggdrasil, especially because I didn't have anyone I could enjoy a good song with anymore, and that's what hurt most. I could hope someone I knew from Yggdrasil was here, like Asaga for example, I could just imagine how well she would be taking this new situation and she was the first I tried calling and messaging, and anything else I could think of because I knew she wouldn't be taking this 'well' at all.

So for now there were only two things I could do, one was carry on until I either found a way back home where I could somehow find a way to settle back into my old life assuming I was experiencing something like a bizarre nightmare, or I could carry on and find out where the road took me on a daily basis. Somehow I felt the more exciting idea would be the better choice, but there was no way I was going to just give up trying to reach my friends.

Now there was another problem that was readily becoming apparent the longer I kept conversing with Aisha, the overall world view on anything that didn't look or act human was essentially seen as undesirable and marked for either annihilation or subjugation depending on what the situation was. I found out that in the case of undead such as myself however, extermination was the answer for the vast majority of the world but the Coatl Empire as a whole generally didn't care what its population comprised of in the long run, and was mostly concerned about how its citizens could benefit the Empire.

Shortly after a conversation about her normal occupation as a merchant I discovered that she was what was known as a Talent Holder, and in her case she was gifted with an unnatural affinity with weaving magic into items making her a very special but potentially dangerous member of the local economy. That was when I expressed an interest in wanting to see her shop, and she readily offered to show me what she had for sale without a single word to discourage me despite the late hour, that and she did so in an all too eager manner before finally settling into a rather intriguing discussion about the local plant life and its many uses until the city of Xiuhpilli loomed in the distance as a vaguely silhouetted mass of blocky shapes lined by dim lanterns and flickering flames in braziers supplemented by torches.

* * *

Asking Aisha about her shop was probably a mistake as I soon found out after we arrived at her shop after following a winding path through several dimly lit streets illuminated by very simple but large lights formed from what appeared to be very large versions of eighteenth century street lamps. She was eagerly asking incessant questions about what I might be interested in shortly after we entered the door to her shop, although it was now quite clear after the initial start of her impromptu questioning that it was due to a genuine love of her chosen line of work, and what I was starting to suspect was a sincere desire to help me acquire whatever I desired if she was able to. She also quite eagerly mentioned that if I needed potions of a specific kind and she didn't have them she could more than likely point me in the direction of someone who I could to go to acquire them for a cheap price but still find the specific quality I may be looking for, or else she could order them for me at cost like she would for the rest of her customers.

I wandered around her shop after I eventually managed to suggest that she prepare herself some sort of refreshment after travelling so far and to my surprise I found myself in a rather impressive little shop the size of my childhood home's living room from when I lived in a rather empty area outside of New Orleans, that of a ten foot wide by twenty foot long rectangular room but its walls were lined with shelves on one side, display cases on the other, bookshelves in a corner with a riot of colors comprising a collection of baubles and shiny gems of varying size and shape. There were more than a few weapons sitting on brackets behind a counter at the back of the room, including a falchion if my memories from spending time playing Yggdrasil served me correctly, and more than a few glass cases holding rings as well. A large aquarium filled with what I assumed was murky water sat on the counter with a sign holding a message written in some illegible language I didn't recognize, although I did notice the shape of some sort of fish moving around inside before I leaned forward to get a better look... right before the fish stopped moving and looked back with an open mouth containing a very impressive array of teeth more akin to curved needles that failed to remind me of anything I had ever seen in a nature documentary.

There were also a lot of books behind the counter, some were very large and obviously very heavy, while others were small and slim. There were also quite a few the size of a typical dictionary and a few that were a lot bigger, almost every one of the books however contained some form of written title in the same language as what was on the sign or was simply decorated with flowing symbols I suspected were wards as they shared similarities to what I had seen used in Yggdrasil from the few instances they were used. The last thing I noticed was an odd sensation, and it was similar to what I used to call my 'gut feeling' which was little more than a prickling sensation that gnawed at the back of my mind like a persistent doubt of having left something routine unfinished, or else a nagging feeling of having left out something important item for a presentation to the board of directors.

It was enough to make me look around the room before movement caught my eye on the side of the aquarium, a shadowy blur that was tall and slim behind my equally blurry reflection causing me to turn abruptly only to see that a woman was now standing in the entrance to Aisha's shop. She was for lack of a better description and utter irony, drop dead gorgeous. She was quite honestly an example of natural beauty, but there was something off about her as she moved into the shop while softly closing the door behind her. She had her chestnut colored hair long enough to pass halfway down her back if the hair resting on her shoulders was to be believed, her face was narrow and angular hinting at an exotic origin that reminded me of someone of Asian descent, but the rest of her was at odds with that interpretation. Her limbs were longer than what most would consider natural, her body was very trim to the point of being possibly painfully thin, her skin was a healthy color but paler than most in this kind of area would have compared to what I assumed were a mix of tropical and temperate plants which hinted at a lot of sun and high temperatures on a regular basis. There were a lot of things that felt wrong about her, but what screamed at me the most was how she moved because her every movement reminded me of a cat stalking a mouse, and every movement was far too fluid for even a dancer I had dated in my old office job. Every move was precise and measured but her movement was slightly stiff like she was ready to pounce or run, and then there was the fact that she was wearing a very long black dress with a white silk collar that spread out slightly in a stylized crescent shape around her neck, and a simple silken scarf with an odd insignia on one end and a large iridescent red gem of some kind on the other as it sat just nestled in a loose perch made from the scarf. What was eerie about this entire situation however wasn't her appearance, but the fact I didn't hear her footfalls when she moved closer to me, it was almost like she wasn't even there.

I heard a soft musical sound, and it took me a while to realize that the woman in front of me had spoken. Therefore I decided to ask her very politely to repeat herself, although I was very nervous about doing so simply because of my past experiences with several women my age and hoped that she spoke either English, or Japanese despite my lack of experience using it which was probably going to be changing soon if everyone spoke it as a common language.

I was about to say something but then Aisha came back and the woman's eyes shifted from me to her, and with it a soft sigh I didn't know I was holding back had escaped quietly, but it was noticed as the woman moved past and gave me a very thorough appraisal with her eyes as she passed me, while she moved toward Aisha with her arms raised in a very familiar fashion that made me long for the days I spent with family.

"Hey sissy, come here and let me give you a hug!"

Aisha looked at the new arrival with a surprised expression and returned the greeting with her own raised arms and gave a short jog forward and gave her a hug as she was picked up off of her feet in a display of almost sisterly love.

"Yuuko! You're back already?"

The woman, Yuuko, leaned back out of the hug and gave a sharp and confident nod with a wide smile, and then she turned her head toward me.

"So Aisha, who's tall, dark, and mysterious? Could it be you've finally found a dark and broody man to call your own?"

"Yuuko, this isn't one of your romance songs!"

I sighed, but internally I was screaming about how unfair it was I was undead and surrounded by people that would probably run at the first hint of my current situation.

I grimly thought, "Oh well, it can't be any worse than the majority of Yggdrasil's everyday anti-heteromorphic community, right?"


	2. Chapter 2

The Arms of Midnight

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Overlord, or any of its related, products, characters, music, or affiliated merchandise. I also do not own any other franchises, series, music, or any other items I may mention in this story in any way much to my chagrin.

* * *

I just realized I made a mistake as the words left my mouth, I was thinking aloud and if they had heard anything that left my idiotic little mind I might be in serious trouble.

Yuuko had turned her head abruptly and said, "Did you say something?"

Thinking quickly I said the only thing I could think of on short notice.

"I said that it must be nice to have someone you can really rely on here in Xiuhpilli's business community!"

Yuuko gave me a rather odd look before she started to laugh. Her laughter was musical, and surprisingly vibrant in comparison to her appearance which hinted at a severe illness considering how pale and thin she was.

"Did I say something funny?"

Yuuko's laughter was slowly starting to dwindle as she lifted a hand to wipe away at the bottom of her eyes as if she was tearing up from laughing too hard, which she certainly didn't sound like she was doing.

"If I may be completely honest with you. You did. You see my lord, I wouldn't be in this city if it wasn't for Aisha being such a good friend and old traveling companion from my adventuring days."

Slowly thoughts and questions from earlier surfaced from memory as I thought back to the ride into Xiuhpilli, and that's when I was hit by a sudden realization.

"Wait, adventuring days? You mean you and Aisha traveled together?"

Yuuko nodded, "Yes... she and a mutual friend of ours were the Nightingales. We may have been famous in the kingdoms on the Northern continent for around a year or two as we made our way to almost all of the major cities as musicians. Of course we also performed quite well as adventurers for the Guild too."

"Oh, so what role did you play in your group? I suppose Aisha here served as the main magic user, and Naomi... well considering how Aisha spoke in regards to her capabilities for finding rare herbs and growing plants... a ranger perhaps?"

Yuuko and Aisha exchanged a look before Yuuko spoke, "Actually, Naomi was our little rogue of the group, I mean she was really good with plants of course, but she was even better with traps and locks, when she wasn't lurking about anyway. Myself on the other hand... well let's just say I'm not someone you want to get into a serious fight with."

I looked at the lithe form of Yuuko and made two assumptions, the first being that she must be really fast if her claim was true, the second thought was that she might be a lot more trouble than she would first appear to be, and that meant she might be very good with illusion making her a big problem if she was anywhere near my capability. That was assuming of course that people could actually get that powerful since I rather easily plied Aisha for information in regards to adventurers with some very careful steering of the conversation on the way to the city.

What I heard wasn't exactly what I would call impressive by Yggdrasil's standards since I knew just how dangerous even a pack of low level monsters could pose to a high level character if they were capable of getting around that character's damage resistances.

Looking at a mirror in the corner I noticed just how dark it was getting outside while a few street lamps were just about done being lit by a pair of lizardmen with long torches, the torches being used to set alight a large wick in a bowl filled with what I assumed was oil.

I was about to say something when Yuuko spoke up first, "I need to get to the tavern Aisha so I will see you in the morning to see if my order came in. I mean I did only drop by to let you know I was back."

"Oh Yuuko! I should have mentioned this sooner but... he's called Dreisen and he needs somewhere to stay for a while... so..."

Yuuko looked at Aisha with a look of annoyance before turning to look at me.

"...Well... Yuuko...?"

Yuuko looked back to Aisha with a really annoyed roll of her eyes, "Yes he can come along, I think there might be a guest or two that I can toss out onto the street for not paying for their tenancy, or if nothing else I'll have him sleep in the festhall."

I looked at Yuuko in surprise, but also mild annoyance.

"Yuuko, if it would not be a problem, I would rather just sleep in the tavern. I even promise not to drink you out of business."

Yuuko took a moment to look at me, even taking a moment to try taking a peek under my robe's hood, and I was suddenly very thankful for the powerful but basic illusion that the robe was given as a permanent enchantment, hiding my face and nature to any observer that I didn't want knowing what I was or what I looked like.

I let out a slight chuckle as I noticed Yuuko pout in annoyance, "See anything of interest my lady?"

I wasn't surprised to see her eyes narrow with a dangerous look in her eye.

"Oh, nothing that would interest me in the slightest..."

She spoke condescendingly, and the underlying playful tone she had was at least amusing, assuming I wasn't about to be on the receiving end of some sick sense of humor. Though knowing my luck it would probably be a cruel twist of fate considering I was already in another world. Though in my opinion it wasn't like it could get any worse.

"Oh, well that is a shame my lady. I suppose I am ready to retire whenever you are ready to leave."

Yuuko gave me a look like I missed some crucial bit of information, and then she turned back to Aisha.

"I suppose I shall see you on the morrow...", Yuuko then leaned toward Aisha's ear and whispered something, but whatever it was made Aisha's eyes widen beneath her mask and then she seemed to lean away from Yuuko suddenly, only to stare at her for a minute or two in complete silence.

"Yuuko, my answer is still no, even if it is a different man altogether."

I wasn't entirely sure what they were referring to, but I really didn't want to find out.

* * *

It was an entire hour of 'girl talk' I was stuck listening to, and I ended up hearing far more than I wanted to learn about BOTH Yuuko and Aisha.

In Aisha's case I learned plenty about her social habits and past attempts at a relationship, which I seriously could have cared less for considering how my usual luck with women in general went. Then of course there was every single little annoying detail I heard about Yuuko, since Aisha did not appreciate having her private life spoken of so boldly in such a public manner, namely in front of someone that wasn't Yuuko or Naomi.

So yeah, I got to learn all sorts of tidbits about Yuuko, ranging from the fact that she had an alluring singing voice, to her absolute hatred of men of the cloth thanks to the apparent hypocrisy the priesthood hailing from the Slane Theocracy seemed to indulge in quite heavily. Of course upon hearing the name, since Aisha was so kind as to give me a brief idea of who the Theocracy was, I decided to prod them for more information with a few well timed questions. I was not pleased by the answers I received to say the least.

So eventually with a little inventive application of key phrases relating to rest, sleep, and the fact that it was the middle of the night, I managed to get Yuuko to stop pestering Aisha and lead me out the door of Aisha's shop. Of course I also promised Aisha I would stop by later in the day to take a proper look at her wares, although Yuuko seemed to be quite annoyed with me for a reason I couldn't quite figure out. However I did catch her giving me a few lingering looks I immediately dismissed as mere curiosity as we made our way down the dimly lit streets.

It wasn't long before I had the chance to meet my first Lizardman that was supposedly a citizen of the Coatl Empire, or more accurately a night patrolman. They were something else compared to the Lizardmen from Yggdrasil's roster of heteromorphic races. They were far leaner than what I suspected from Aisha's description, and they definitely had a look of intelligence about them to supplement their physique. A trait I guessed from the fact they gave both Yuuko and I a quick glance, and only hesitated upon seeing my staff. Although they seemed to relax after I nodded, causing my hood to bob slightly, which seemed to be taken exactly as I had hoped it would. I had hoped it would pass for a sign of respect, although I wasn't quite expecting them to nod in response as they continued their patrol.

Of course, the walk to Yuuko's tavern did give me the opportunity to observe her in a more neutral setting when she was focused on something other than interacting with someone, and what I saw was not exactly normal behavior for the average human. The most notable thing about her was for lack of a better term, just how alert she was. She seemed to scrutinize everything with a disinterested gaze, although she gave the few people, or more accurately human occupants of the city, that we passed a rather predatory look that faded as quickly as it appeared.

When we finally got to her business, to be honest I wasn't sure what to expect, but I didn't expect her to have a two story tall inn that had to be taking up the entire corner of two separate streets and extending around eighty feet up both streets.

* * *

"So we're finally here Mister tall, dark, and mysterious. Welcome to my inn and tavern."

"It is quite the sight."

I was standing in a tavern alright, drinks were served in mugs, chalices, and in a few instances what looked like metal cups. Laughter from dozens of patrons and the sound of those same toasting revelers was a constant assurance of that fact, along with more than a few barmaids making exclamations of surprise that may or may not have been followed up by a slap or the occasional spilled drink.

Frankly it reminded me of a bar I used to frequent during my stay in the company's New York office branch, except for a distinct lack of a karaoke stage or a big screen TV perpetually tuned to the sports channel. Yuuko didn't seem to pay the crowd much attention however.

I was about to say something but then the sound of a woman crying out in surprise and falling cups hitting the floor drew both my attention and Yuuko's, and judging from the scene before us I was pretty sure Yuuko was about to kill someone if I interpreted her expression correctly.

I watched as Yuuko screamed at a man that looked tall enough to look my current form in the eye, and then the man in question simply laughed it off and continued to harass the barmaid he was holding onto. Though considering Yuuko was walking right at him with murder in her eyes he was actually starting to realize he was in serious trouble with the owner.

I didn't think he was exactly thinking properly since his eyes were definitely gave away the fact he had been drinking and upon seeing Yuuko heading right for him his expression changed from one of realization of impending doom to one of annoyance.

"I have told you to leave my girls alone you arrogant, oversized, womanizing, swine loving bas-!"

Yuuko's head twisted sharply to the right as the man's hand hit her face, and the next thing I knew that same hand and arm were bent the wrong way. I was dumbstruck, mostly because Yuuko was standing upright, looking extremely pissed at that, and the man was bawling as if his entire body was being broken, though considering Yuuko was taking her time grinding his other hand into the floor with her shoe so I didn't doubt anything about that notion failing to come true shortly.

* * *

The man was being 'escorted' to a nearby guardhouse by a few 'adventurers', free of charge, as a favor owed to Yuuko while she was sitting at the tavern's serving counter with a bottle of an amber colored liquor pressed to the left side of her face. I was sitting nearby, and I watched Yuuko as she sat fuming with such anger that she had given more than a few looks to her customers that she sent them scurrying away from her gaze in fear of rousing her ire.

I was concerned about her, though I was rather interested in finding out how she inflicted the injuries she did, because from what I could see she must have broken the man's one arm in at least three separate places including their wrist, and then their other hand was undoubtedly shattered after she ground it into the flooring considering how much noise it made along with leaving blood on the floor.

Then of course there was the fact that those injuries were just the tip of the iceberg as she had actually picked them up and then slammed them into the floor, which judging from how they were breathing he had to have had at least a couple of broken ribs. So if nothing else she was very strong, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was perhaps something I was overlooking.

So, considering the circumstances I decided to do the foolish thing.

"Are you alright Yuuko?"

Yuuko looked at me with some of the same ire she surveyed some of her customers with, just before slamming the bottle she had been using to soothe her face down onto the countertop loudly. I was surprised to see that her face wasn't even red from where she had been hit, though I was a bit surprised to see her eyes which were a dark brown flicker in the lighting to a dull red before switching back to the placid brown they originally were.

So I came to the conclusion that she was definitely not human, but something that could pass for it without closer inspection.

That was of course when she decided to answer my question into her wellbeing.

"Do I look like I'm alright?"

"Well it doesn't look like you'll be bruising so that's always a good thing. I do have to ask though and I understand if you don't want to answer it considering the circumstances. How did you manage to break so many of his bones?"

Yuuko gave a slight smile that practically dripped anger and venom.

"Oh, let's just say I'm really good at breaking things."

I let out a dark chuckle, "If I was as good at breaking bones like you just demonstrated, I wouldn't have let him get away with it."

"Oh, but I don't intend to let him get away with it..."

I looked at Yuuko as I had let my vision drift across the room toward a small stage built into the tavern's far wall and then looked back to Yuuko, her eyes were full of malice, but it was controlled, focused even. It actually made me extremely uncomfortable, possibly even to the point of panic but I felt myself being forcibly calmed down.

I was a bit wary but decided to try asking anyway, "What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing in particular... but enough about me. I think it's time we get you settled in but it doesn't look like any of my tenants are behind on rent, though there is one that will be leaving within the next few days if you don't mind sleeping in the ale hall until then."

"Hmm... I guess I could but I need to do some running as soon as possible once it is morning. If you could arrange for a wake up call that would be much appreciated."

Yuuko gave a whimsical hum before she spoke again, "I guess I could arrange for that... but I want a little something up front..."

I sighed and reached into my sleeve to access my personal inventory, I hoped and surprisingly I felt what I was after.

"Would this suffice Yuuko?"

I offered a few gold coins by fanning them out on the counter out of view of anyone not behind the counter or immediately next to me.

I watched as Yuuko's eyes widened in shock, but there was something else there too, though I knew what greed looked like and I know that what she had in her eyes wasn't it.

"Oh my... what's your name again?"

"I haven't told you my name yet, it's Dreisen."

Yuuko was giving me a fresh appraisal while she thumbed one of the coins I had from Yggdrasil into her hand and inspected it. It wasn't long before she tossed it to the lizardman behind the counter only for them to bite into it, undoubtedly to check if it was a real gold coin.

"You know Dreisen, I haven't seen coins minted like this before... where did you get it?"

"Oh, here and there..."

She took one look at me and gave a sigh of annoyance before leaning in to whisper out of courtesy, "I find that to be a bit unlikely, although I understand why you would not want to tell anyone about where you had found these as each one is just over the standard weight for the local coinage... so that means it is a lot closer to a solid ounce of gold."

I took a quick glance around to make sure no one was listening in within easy earshot, "I'm guessing that's a bad thing then...?"

Yuuko laughed softly before answering, "It means Lord Dreisen, that you are probably very rich and I will put these two coins on a marker for your expenses for the duration of your stay in Xiuhpilli. Also, welcome to the Arms of Midnight, and I am your host, Yuuko, also known as Lady Midnight to those who come to listen to my singing."


	3. Chapter 3

Night Terror and Start of the Day

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Overlord, or any of its related, products, characters, music, or affiliated merchandise. I also do not own any other franchises, series, music, or any other items I may mention in this story in any way much to my chagrin.

* * *

It must be around an hour or two after my last conversation with Yuuko, and I was beginning to face a new problem head on which I had only recently began to deal with when I first arrived in this world. That was the fact that as a Lich, I don't sleep, meaning I was stuck in a perpetually 'awakened' state but it was made worse by the fact that I had to pretend to be asleep.

Though what made it practically unbearable was the fact that I had nothing to relieve the boredom that was setting in other than the fact I could use the **Message** skill to communicate to Vargrim, among other NPCs from my guild. Although I wasn't exactly sure who I would want to talk to, but Vargrim would always be a good choice as I was sure he would be busy organizing things to a higher degree than what it had been when I left and might want a second opinion on something. On the other hand Melena is a Vampire and would probably be quite willing to talk considering I am her superior, but I had quite a few other options for that matter and I didn't know how long it would be before it would be dawn so keeping a vampire up past their normal sleeping schedule would probably be unwise in the long run.

I would have kept thinking of more options but then I heard a loud creaking sound from across the room since I was stuck 'sleeping' in what passed for the tavern's bar area in modern terminology. I didn't move as I had made quite the effort to looks like I was sleeping with my back to the bar area's counter by using a chair for myself, and another one as a foot stool with my staff tucked through one arm as it stood against my side as my arms were crossed over my chest.

I managed to shift my view just enough to see where the noise came from, that same giant of a man was creeping into the tavern and slowly moving his way up the stairs, but it was quite clear that his intrusion was unheard by anyone else. I would have moved to stop him out of the fact that he hit Yuuko in front of me, but I watched as he stopped at the first door and fumbled a key out of his pocket and then walked into what I assumed was his room with a rather rushed manner. The next thing I knew he was moving his way back down the stairs without making a sound while carrying a small satchel, a bedroll, and a mace, and thinking for a moment I recalled that aside from the creaking of the door he entered he hadn't made a single sound despite having what I suspected to be a few broken bones.

I watched as he left the front door open letting a warm breeze wash through the room, an I used a spell that was rarely used despite its utility.

" **Veil of Silence** "

The tavern fell silent as the sounds of snoring patrons sharing the tavern as a temporary sleeping area and various other noises were muted to a soft drone, and then I moved to the door and shut it. If the man wasn't supposed to be here then Yuuko can lodge a complaint after I tell her about his late night 'visit' and if he stole something that could be replaced I would more than happily pay for it as it would be my fault for letting him walk out the door.

I had a fleeting thought of following him and ensuring that he received a taste of morality's crueler side, but I was mentally exhausted from the day and I needed to try something to alleviate that stress. I sat back down in my chair and placed my feet back on my makeshift footstool before attempting to 'fall asleep' once again.

* * *

The man was called Charles Arnheim, a mercenary by trade and adept at the subtle art of lock picking and theft despite his considerable size like the majority of his family. He had done plenty of jobs in his career as a mercenary, but last job was the most lucrative. All he had to do was check Xiuhpilli for a woman matching a portrait he had been 'requested' to memorize, and then use the innate Talent he was born with to find them.

A talent for seeing through illusions, granted he was a bit surprised to see a Lich walking so brazenly through the door to that excuse of an inn and tavern. Though he was even more shocked to see the woman he was looking for there in the inn hiding in plain view and she didn't look a day older than when the portrait was made. Then again the vampire nobles paid him with enough gold that he could have just ran with it all and lived the rest of his life in a cushy palace with a noble title bought and paid for.

However he was born a servant, and he would die as such serving the noble his family pledged themselves to by blood oath and pain of death. Queen Isabella was his patron, and as she was originally the Baroness Isabella of the blood craving Nobility, he would take one of the trade vessels heading to the Eternal Kingdom with its iron shipment wrapped in oiled cloth and sealed within caulked boxes, as added security would always be rewarded handsomely on the long trip. That and his duty here was done, a note passed to the Queen's emissary at their embassy a mere hour before his incident in the inn had provided him his chance to return home with his only mistake being an attempt to enjoy another night's stay at the inn.

Taking an alley to cut down on the distance he needed to traverse, Charles was making good time, a potion he had lifted from the guardhouse had proven to be quite useful as once he had taken the time to get a proper look at the label it turned out to be one of healing, and a powerful one at that according to its origin at Xiuhpilli's apothecary. It was strong enough to mend his broken ribs and shattered hand, but not enough to fully heal his arm. Granted it healed most of the injuries, but it felt as if the flames of Hell were alive within his wrist and elbow. Though it isn't like it mattered much, once he would get through this alley he would be close to the city gate, and from there he only needed to travel for a few days to reach the port city of Ophiuchus to the North of Xiuhpilli, as if traveling through the Undead Burg wasn't going to be enough trouble, but then again none of them exactly cared if someone was alive or not, they just cared if you were a part of a death cult like the Church of the Risen Ones.

A sour look of disgust formed on his scarred face at the thought of that Church, he would rather deal with the 'normal' death worshippers instead since they were at least considerate with the remains of the departed, as well as being clear about their motives while the Church of the Risen Ones did whatever their Undead patrons wanted, and that made them dangerous for a lot of reasons.

Looking further up the alley he saw something move in the shadows, and then what ended up happening was a rather pale man stepping out of the darkness shuffling into view, which Charles initially passed off the man as being deep into their cups. Then again most drunkards in this town were probably sleeping it off at home or else were down at their favorite watering hole passed out on the floor, and not shuffling through a back alley with a sword scraping against the cobblestone.

"Put that thing away or you'll hurt yourself you old drunk..."

Charles' eyes widened as he saw what the shadows had hidden from view as the man finished leaving the shadows, he wasn't alone as several others shambled forth with various minor injuries and a each including the first man had a single jagged wound to the neck as if stabbed with a short bladed knife.

There was also a very telltale sign that these people were either dead, or no longer in control of their bodies as blood seemed to ebb and flow in sickly tendrils across their exposed skin, and their veins pulsed with every movement the small 'mob' of shambling men under the effect of some kind of spell, or curse.

"What the Hell?"

Charles turned to head back down the alleyway but he stopped short of his second step as more people left the cover of darkness or were silhouetted against the light cast by several street lamps the way he came. Each was clearly the same as the last with their shambling gait.

In the light at the end of the alleyway a trio of figures moved into the entryway to the alley, wearing robes, and bladed staves drawn. A fourth was behind them next to fifth person, a woman with long flowing hair that shimmered like liquid quicksilver with veins of gold in the dim lighting, crimson eyes, and lily white flesh standing in a stately manner in a flowing dress made of dark cloth reminiscent of the vampiric Nobility of his homeland.

She was also gleefully smiling at him and with a gesture whatever she was doing caused the people surrounding Charles to charge weapons raised and a silent cry upon their lips echoing as a bloodcurdling gurgle that was further punctuated by the rasping sound of metal on stone.

* * *

Charles was beaten and bloodied, but he was still standing.

The three robed figures stood back as the individuals, that he now knew to be mere corpses being controlled by the woman like a master puppeteer at a grand performance, moved in to wear Charles down in waves of flesh and weapons.

It was a performance orchestrated by the woman where a lot of swords, clubs, maces, daggers, grasping hands, and balled fists were involved. It was also extremely painful as Charles' wounded elbow and wrist were on the verge of bringing him to tears and collapsing from the overwhelming pain from using his mace with both hands to block incoming overhead blows, and his back was now covered in a myriad collection of minor wounds that were bleeding profusely just like the rest of him. His limbs were covered in a lot more than minor injuries however as many of his attackers were focused on slowing him down, and with the freshly bruised flesh his limbs now sported along with his previous injuries they did exactly what they were intended to do.

The robed figures finally decided to do something apparently, but they didn't move toward him, instead they backed away and the woman stepped forward with a frowning expression and a sharp growl that sent shudders running down Charles' spine. Now that she was moving closer he finally figured out what he was going to be fighting, fangs were evident as she smiled at him for the second time, which paired with her other more prominent features declared her a vampire, although she was a bit different than the Nobles he was used to in quite a few subtle ways.

The most prominent is that as she drew nearer he felt fear gnaw away at his resolve and it only got stronger the closer she came with a growing numbness in his limbs. Something that the Nobility of the Southern continent failed to do in the various meetings he had participated in during his past ordeals at Queen Isabella's personal request. This vampire was only about ten feet away before she stopped her advance, and her mere presence brought him to the verge of running away terrified for his life.

Something he refused to do.

"So tell me vampire, what makes me worthy of your attention?"

The woman was silent for a long time before raising her right hand and clenching it saying two words that he didn't quite hear before he felt a numbness in his chest followed by a pressure building up rapidly before a sharp pain caused him to stumble and his vision faded to black with the faint image of a beating heart within her hand's clutches. The last thought echoing in his mind as he fell into oblivion's embrace were several attempts to recognize what she said, what finally fit together made sense.

The vampire had said, " **Grasp Heart**."

* * *

The vampire was for lack of a better term, absolutely livid, but still in control of herself letting out a faint crackling sound from her left hand, which was balled into a fist and beginning to drip blood as it shook in rage. She had wanted this man to suffer, to break, but instead he stood against what amounted to a dozen puppets, a dozen fresh corpses, readily provided to fulfill her night's agenda. She gestured with her right hand in an upward motion palm up and fingers curled ever so slightly as if she was letting rain collect in her palm.

The sound of blood leaving thirteen bodies forcefully would have been enough to make even veterans of the most bloody war blessed with a metaphorical 'cast iron stomach' from enduring the horrors of their battlefields, clutch their bellies and wish for it to stop as it all began to swirl midair before collecting into a large orb of deep crimson that the light cast from the end of the alley along with the moonlight danced across its surface. The four figures in robes kneeled on one knee with heads bowed as the blood finished gathering and began to glow with a macabre inner light a foot or two above the vampire.

"Clean this... mess... up, now."

The four figures raised their heads and the one that had been standing near the vampire earlier spoke up, "Of course Your Radiance, we will gladly give our lives to exalt and serve the Eternal Ones."

The four figures stood and cast a series of spells independent of each other, but clearly in concert with cooperation in mind causing the corpses to twitch and move on their own and form a line, another person wearing robes exited the shadows nearby with the end of a length of chain, with several other people moving behind them carrying various items such as another chain, shackles, and a single ball and chain to be attached to the last figure being the body of Charles. Another pair of them cast a spell that caused the now standing and shackled corpses to take on the appearance of wearing ragged prison clothes without a single injury visible.

The vampire herself however contented herself with ensuring that nothing of the blood spilled would remain behind, while the rest of the robed accomplices collected weapons from the ground and hid them beneath their robes, and as one they all left the alleyway under magical guise to appear as a train of prisoners in shackles with their jailors, escorted by quite a few soldiers of humanoid origin.

The vampire on the other hand took one look at the procession and gave an annoyed sigh before walking down the alley and as soon as they were out of earshot she made a grumbling speech about 'death obsessed fools' before stepping into the shadows and disappearing entirely as if she was never there.

* * *

I 'awoke' to the sight of sunlight filtering in through the windows, which after finding a compromise between 'rest' and a meditative trance that I at least hoped look convincing enough to pass for being in deep slumber, but faking the rise and fall of my chest in an even rhythm wasn't exactly easy so I found myself also hoping nobody really paid me much attention.

I was about to put on the act of stretching and other various habits I had picked up in my normal life when I felt a hand place itself on my shoulder. I turned my head slightly while placing my left hand atop the unexpected 'guest' and I was surprised to feel a ring pressing into the palm of my hand, and very carefully I brought the person's hand into view. It was pale and feminine, that coupled with what I remembered saying last night meant only one thing. I followed the arm up with my gaze and a turn of my body to see who I suspected was next to me.

"Ah, good morning Yuuko. I am surprised you personally decided to make sure I was awake. Though I wonder how you are faring this morning."

Yuuko looked absolutely dreadful with dark rings around her eyes and a tired expression plastered across her attractive features, but I wasn't about to say that to her face.

"My, my, Dreisen, you certainly are a gentleman aren't you?"

I let out a slight chuckle but politely replied as I was unsure if she was being sarcastic or not, "Well I will never call myself one, but I do try to hold myself to that ideal."

Yuuko let out a quiet laugh.

"You really don't have to worry about that around here with most of these commoners, but before you get along with your day... is there anything that I can assist you with?"

"Well Yuuko, there is the small matter of that overgrown thug that hit you last night. He had snuck into the tavern, and then up those stairs to a room he opened with a key before running out of here with a sack, a mace, and..."

I watched as Yuuko stared at me while I spoke, until she spoke up quite curtly, but her tone was still quite polite despite her clearly aggravated state, "He came back to run off with his belongings I see... thank you for telling me but I shall have to report this to the town watch when I have a moment.", Yuuko leaned forward before speaking again, "Though the good news is that once I have it cleaned up a bit the room is yours..."

I had a sudden, and foolish thought which I was not inclined to follow through due to my being Undead. I was about to say something to Yuuko in regard to the room in question, or at least that was the plan until a lizardman walked in wearing an impressive example of leather armor with chainmail riveted across the edges of a cuirass made from what looked to be steel, and draped over the shoulders with a metal pauldron holding the additional chainmail in place, along with an impressive amount of detailing on the cuirass created with bronze embossing depicting what I assumed was one of the many depictions of a hydra based on the serpentine body and three snake-like heads, though there was also a highly decorated metal plate that curved upward from just behind the pauldron and created a crescent shaped collar of sorts that may have been meant to stop a blade from taking the wearer's head off. The effectiveness of such an improvement may be called into question with how thin it was however.

It was also quite apparent that Yuuko knew them as she addressed them by name and rank, "Ah Captain Tocitza of the Noble Clan Axlotl! I wasn't expecting you until around an hour from now. Are you here on business or your usual remedial tea?"

The way the lizardman looked at her was a bit off putting since it had a flicker of annoyance, but there was something else that I recognized surprisingly enough and that was mild desperation, something that I didn't expect to be seeing from something that was almost six and a half feet tall with grey skin resembling that of a crocodile's save for the color, with teeth and claws to match. Though considering I had to deal with people that would beg to keep their jobs after messing up badly enough to see me, I was quite used to picking out desperation and other hidden emotions, but I wasn't sure if I could apply such trivial exercises in workplace psychoanalysis with nonhuman races, especially when I was far from being a professional.

"No, I am here for businessss, I need to hang thesssse possstingssss from the Adventurer'sss Guild. My men found bodiesss that are unexplained and we are unable to invessstigate on our own for now. Any that want thisss job are to head to the Guild'sss headquartersss immediately for detailssss."

He, or at least I was assuming it was a he, slammed a short stack of tan colored papers in front of Yuuko and headed back out the door without anything else to say.

"So Yuuko... are most of the Coatl like that, or is it just him?"

Yuuko scoffed before answering, "No, he's a unique one of their kind I think, as most of the Coatl I've met are far more cordial.", she took a moment to try taking a look under my hood again before giving me a playful smile and gently pulled me toward the door.

"Now run along, I'll be here all day if you want to come by and talk. Oh, and I know an adventurer when I see them, the Adventurer's Guild is down the street and to the left just past the market if you're thinking about checking that job posting."

"Alright, but do you really need to get me out of your door badly enough to be pulling me along?"

Yuuko turned her head toward me and started to say something when I heard a call from the direction of the kitchen or bar area, as they were both in the same area from what I had seen last night.

"Mistress! We need you in the kitchen quickly!"

Yuuko rolled her eyes in annoyance before shouting toward the kitchen.

"I will be there once I am done escorting this gentleman out for the day."

"Well, I do hope that whatever problem has arisen will prove to be a simple one. I shall see you later in the day Yuuko, have a good day."

* * *

I shut the door behind me after letting a rather tired looking lizardman through, and then I took a good look at the surroundings near the inn.

What I saw was truly an impressive city when compared to the Feudal Europe, carts moved by on the cobbled street, and some of those carts had a series of barrels inside where chamber pots were being emptied inside. The fact that they were putting all of that waste into a cart to be taken somewhere told me that this society had at least relatively good grasp of basic sanitation which meant certain diseases were unlikely to be found here, all that was really missing however would be a proper sewer system.

What I assumed to be street names were written upon large lamp posts in the middle of intersections with plenty of room for carts to pass by unhindered, storefront signs were prominently displayed, and quite a few of the town watch were patrolling the streets in pairs keeping an eye on the daily goings on of passerby. Though all of those facts did raise a very big problem for me, I can't read a single thing on the signs, and that meant I might have more than a few issues with a language barrier. I could potentially play off my inability to read as an issue with a foreign language, but if my ability to speak the apparently 'common' language used by what I assume is everyone, well that could lead to a few uncomfortable questions down the metaphorical road. Questions I might not be able to answer.

I remembered what Yuuko said as far as her directions went, they were probably accurate, but not quite as detailed as I would have liked considering I was in an unfamiliar city. Then again, it also meant I had an advantage if I ever needed to send a written message as I could potentially pass along personal correspondence in English or perhaps even proper Japanese and Romaji if there was a dictionary in the guild library.

All were thoughts for later as my first order of business was to find a nice quiet place that offered privacy so I could talk to Vargrim without interruption, among a few other select NPCs to relay what I had found so far. That and I think Melena might be quite useful in tracking down whoever left those bodies considering she is a vampire, and it would be foolish of me to waste mana points on a bunch of spells instead of utilizing her keen senses.

So after a moment of contemplation I started walking up the street toward what appeared to be a lot of stalls set up for merchants to hawk their wares, and from where I was standing I could hear quite a few of them. I also had a rather odd thought, where there is money, there will be thieves, and thieves tend to know a city inside and out.


	4. Chapter 4

Hunger and Knowledge

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Overlord, or any of its related, products, characters, music, or affiliated merchandise. I also do not own any other franchises, series, music, or any other items I may mention in this story in any way much to my chagrin.

* * *

So, a nice little walk to the market and I'm assaulted by the scents of cooking meat, the sound of people squabbling over prices and other objects, and more than a few people in gaudy attire that hurt my eyes. There were also a lot of people that took one look in my direction and scurried out of my way after seeing my staff. I was expecting at least some kind of reaction considering what Aisha had said about the general opinion of mages, especially masked ones and that seemed to extend to hooded people carrying a very ornate staff.

There was however a distinct lack of visible crime like petty theft from what I had seen since I had been lingering in the area for almost two hours now.

Xiuhpilli was at best guess a fairly large city considering what I had learned about my situation and it had an appropriately sized 'town watch' to function as guards and police, but I figured that in an hour there should have been at least one attempt at theft, an attempt that never happened during my time here in the market. There was at least one impressive sight and that was the ornate fountain in the middle of the marketplace. The fountain was designed so that the water pumped in from just below the statue of a lizardman of similar build to the many examples of its kind in the city. Beyond the fact that it was obviously a figure of importance to the Coatl, the statue and fountain had an underlying oily blue sheen to the stonework, the face was long and angular like most of the Coatl I had recently seen in the market, but there were two pieces of some kind of stone similar to turquoise for the statue's eyes.

Turning away from the marketplace and finding the adventurer's guild was starting to sound more and more appealing the longer I stayed in the market catching scent after scent, each more exotic than the last. That and I was having a problem picking out individual conversations among the medley of sounds and voices coming from what I assumed was the normal goings-on of the market.

Taking a moment to look over the impressive collection of items for sale before leaving the market turned out to be a good idea when I caught sight of a child, presumably a young boy judging from the fact they had short hair and weren't wearing a dress as I was far enough away that I couldn't readily tell what gender they were from physical characteristics. They were in front of a vendor selling varying cuts of meat, and the one he was reaching for was what appeared to be a leg of some sort that was just big enough to feed more than two people, but small enough to have a relatively easy time hiding it from sight.

I didn't bother waiting to see if they would run, and with mercifully little difficulty I managed to pass through a fair portion of the crowd between myself and the meat vendor. I figured it would take a few more seconds before I could readily grab onto them if I had to, but for now I would be content to follow them and see if they lead me to someone else, mostly because I was hoping that the child wasn't alone and was in fact working for a group of people.

* * *

Following a child was hardly what I would consider to be easy in this city as doing so ended up leading me through several alleys, down a couple streets that could barely be called such, and through two abandoned buildings the size of my childhood home in the rural United States before the encroaching grasp of urban life swallowed it up in a frenzy of new road construction and the placement of new water pumping stations with accompanying pipelines. Overall the entire act of following them made me begin to appreciate the lack of physical exhaustion due to my new undead nature, but it didn't help me in the short term on several occasions when I lost the child.

Eventually they finally decided to stop running and take a turn into what I could only describe as a poorer section of the city, the buildings were less maintained than the rest of the city, and the streets were often occupied by people in ragged clothes. There were also more than a few people plying the oldest trades known to humanity, and the other races of this world apparently, as evidenced by several propositions I received from more than a few women that flocked close and tried to look beneath my robe's hood. In response I pulled my robe tighter, ducked my head down to bring the hood lower and threw a few coins in their direction with words intended to get themselves off of the streets for a while, which in many cases the act was answered by cries of praise and blessings from a multitude of faiths, and a few curses about cruel nobles wandering the slums for their amusement by throwing away money they could easily replace.

I made sure to keep a closer eye on the child after being swarmed like I had, and after a while I managed to properly catch up with them, up until they turned once again into another alley. Upon following them down that alley I discovered something rather surprising, the alley had had an extraordinarily clean street considering how poor the general population in this area seemed to be at first glance.

The street had a building directly across from the end of the alley, a large walled off building at that.

The building itself was at least three stories tall excluding the addition of a very tall and buttressed roof including a series of what could only be described as balconies and what might be small apartments. The building itself had very impressive glass windows covered by intricate iron grates which were most likely wrought iron, the glass itself was clear but not capable of being seen through as it seemed to be quite similar to frosted glass from where I stood, and a large opening seemingly served as an avenue for large carts or carriages in the middle of the building. The windows however were what gave me pause, they were either had that appearance because it was intended, or it was just caked with grime from disuse. The wall surrounding the building separated it from its neighboring buildings, along with a small alley passing by the wall itself to either side of the building, and both the small alleys and the wall itself seemed to lead to the street on the other side of the building.

I continued to watch as the child ran straight through the opening in the wall which had a very large, and open, gate that was made from some kind of silvery metal which was most likely steel. Why anyone would want a steel gate in an age where it appeared to be a rather advanced feudal era would be a question I would have to ask the owner, if it was indeed owned by anyone.

I moved down the alley, checking the shadows with sidelong glances and a very wary eye toward the building I was approaching.

When I finally exited the alleyway, I looked up and down both sides of the street checking for foot traffic, or even carts and horse traffic. I wasn't too surprised to merely see people on foot, with the occasional cart that was pulled off to one side of the side of the street or the other.

I checked up and down the street before crossing, watching my every step along the way to avoid stepping into anything, an act that was up until now quite the challenge.

Once I reached the gate I felt an oddly warm sensation, quite possibly to the point of irritation. On a whim, I decided to use a basic spell... it was something akin to an all purpose detection spell, but it was focused toward detecting specific types of magic or enchantment without the added benefit of revealing how powerful it actually was. So when I found out that there was in fact a holy aura emanating from the ground, I proceeded with caution as I did not check to see just how high my resistance to any form of divine, holy, blessed, or whatever it was in Yggdrasil, actually was. The reasoning behind that was simple, my equipment could hold off any kind of long term status affecting spells, enchantments, or abilities long enough for me to counter them. Then again, this holy aura was an irritant, not a danger as I wasn't taking any damage despite not wearing anything to counter it.

I continued up a short walkway, there was grass off to either side of the walkway, driveway, or whatever it was leading up to the building as it was certainly wide enough to serve as both. Once I moved maybe five feet past the gate however... that was when the irritating holy aura gave way to something else. It was an almost comfortable feeling, a lulling song that couldn't be heard by the ear but felt in the soul, it was... almost intoxicating. When I finally reached the archway belonging to the opening leading to the other side of the building I could see that it was in fact concealing an inner courtyard, and the building was much bigger than I initially expected.

The interior courtyard had to be at least twenty feet long and just as wide, with windows clearly having a view of the courtyard. All around the courtyard was a variety of... things.

A pair of carts, wheeled cages, crates, barrels, a ballista of some sort, and what appeared to be several rods made from iron with crystals adorning each one's end by being tied down with a series of thin leather straps.

It wasn't long after I spotted all of this that I heard someone call out.

"Hey Kid! You back with the bait?"

"Yes! Someone followed me all the way here though!"

I couldn't help but feel that I was an very large, and idiotic, collection of bones after all instead of being an exceedingly lucky twenty five year old man of average features that had been a blue collar worker that landed a white collar management position through hard work and political maneuvering, which ended in tragedy as I became stuck in the body of a completely fictional character of my own design.

As I felt that little feeling creep into existence, a longsword ended up moving from my right out of literally nowhere and position itself right across where my throat would have been, but it wasn't close enough to have slit it in the event I still had a throat instead of open air and a spinal column in its place.

"So you followed our little errand boy, now tell me who you are."

It was the same voice, masculine, commanding, and above all... arrogant.

"Well, I would prefer to discuss that kind of information under more amicable circumstances rather than seeing a blade about my neck."

Laughter, cruel and feminine, echoed off from my right before the laughter's owner spoke up.

"Well Cal, I think I like this one, he's cool under pressure for a caster."

"I know you would, but that doesn't explain why he followed Axel all the way here from the market."

I made a sound that could pass for clearing my throat.

"Well, I followed the child here because I was waiting for a thief, I need information about the city and I didn't mind getting it from thieves, or the poor and desperate."

My reply must have struck a nerve as the blade against where my neck would have been seemed to edge closer, and the woman off to my right all but snarled, the man that was hidden out of sight seemed to scoff, and at least three others I didn't know about uttered a variety of epithets, that seemed to be directed at magic users in general, in my direction. That reaction also happened to suggest that two were off by the two carts, most likely behind some crates there, and the last voice was somewhere else off to my right, seemingly from within the shadows.

That was when the spear fell from out of nowhere and embedded its tip into the ground. A foot long blade of black metal was now sticking up out of the ground with a shaft at least eight feet long, making it closer to a pike than a spear. The white ribbon attached to the base of the tip was rather novel however, as it would undoubtedly become dirty rather quickly with the weapon's use.

Then there was the seventh member, a shadow with wings moved across the courtyard before finally being made into something tangible as the shadow's owner landed atop its rounded end with perfect balance, giving away the fact that the spear was made from something extremely sturdy. A female harpy, a woman with an odd mix of hair and feathers, arms that were essentially a pair of hands at the ends of wings. Their feathers were breathtaking considering their ebon color, their legs were not too far off from being human but they ended in large avian feet similar to a raven's own black feet. Though the finely chiseled features of her face was clearly a stretched version of the human countenance. Their face was slightly more pointed than that of a normal human's, but their eyes were a bit more round and seemed to swim with curiosity that dimmed slightly as their translucent eyelid slipped over them. Their torso and legs were covered in a combination of leather held together by straps, and a series of thin metal plates made from a pearlescent material.

Then the harpy's head cocked to one side in an oddly inquisitive look reminiscent of a bird and she made a sound that was unexpected, as I had felt I would hear a bird call instead of a single, spoken word.

"Huh?"

I looked at the harpy with a rather curious expression, or at least what I hoped could be considered curious if anyone dared to remove my hood.

"Excuse me?"

That was when I heard the child's voice from wherever they were.

"Don't mind Sky, she's like that... a lot."

The harpy hopped down from her chosen perch atop her spear's blunt end, and seemingly hopped over in my direction with nary a care in the world before poking at my robe with a talon tipped finger nearly a foot long and covered in the same tough skin that covered her bird-like feet. In response I stepped back out of reflex and the wish to avoid being discovered as a member of the undead for as long as possible, just in case the discovery of a walking corpse was enough to draw unwanted attention from unknown parties that may take offense to a walking, and talking skeleton wandering around their streets.

That was at least my thought until I noted an eighth individual in the courtyard.

A skeleton seated atop a crate. It was at least as tall as a Death Knight from Yggdrasil, and equipped with similar equipment. Though it was clearly lacking the fear aura of its cousin, and instead of the blade and tower shield the Death Knight bore, it had what appeared to live up to its namesake as a longsword bordering on the proportions necessary for a bastard sword up to and including its longer handle, and a smaller kite shield. Not that a kite shield was much smaller than a true tower shield, it's just a matter of the differences in the proportions of size between those shields, and their different designs contributing to very different weights in some cases.

Though admittedly the equipment of the undead warrior was quite new and to an extent, very well taken care of. The warrior himself was upon a more indepth examination from where I stood, a bit different compared to a Death Knight as this being still had a lot more flesh, even if it had been dried out or burned to the consistency expected of old meat that may have been charred by an open flame.

The first voice I had heard call out to me called out once again.

"Hey Baldur, what's your take on 'em?"

The undead warrior didn't speak per se, but they did look in my direction before motioning with their head toward the carts.

The hidden man replied shortly thereafter.

"You mean to tell me you like 'em too?"

The confident and sure nod that followed in response, just before the undead warrior slid off of the crate and assuming a striking pose worthy of a knight from the fantasy games of old definitely gave away what kind of individual this undead being patterned himself after.

It was also when they slid off of the crate that the armor seemed to strike up a feeling of familiarity with their equipment within the depths of my mind, but alas, I could not place it. Though the sudden realization that one of the bottom edges of their kite shield was sharpened into a bladed edge didn't exactly sit well with me when it came to the kind of fighting style they may prefer.

"Okay Baldur, that's enough for me. Okay new blood, looks like we have ourselves a bookworm tagging along for our big hunt to haul in razor beak hydras. So hop onto one of those carts and we'll be off to the hunt once we get you signed up with us at the adventurer's guild."

I couldn't help but think to myself about just how 'lucky' I was that I decided to follow a random child stealing food, which was apparently for bait. Bait that I fell for, hook, line, and sinker.

I did however have one thought that stuck in my mind, and I had to voice it.

Which I did, all the while giving a single roll of my eyes as I shifted my view to the carts once again.

"I'm getting paid for this... right?"


	5. Chapter 5

The Quarry of Hunters

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Overlord, or any of its related, products, characters, music, or affiliated merchandise. I also do not own any other franchises, series, music, or any other items I may mention in this story in any way much to my chagrin.

* * *

It was dark inside, empty, cold, and unmoving. It was a shell trapped inside a box of wood and all it could do was call out with a voice that was not a voice, but there were those that could hear it nonetheless throughout the ages. A beating heart of a call for some, a song for others, and more still a pull toward something inexplicable and unknown.

Its form was always the same, but it changed nonetheless. Its exterior had become warped..., chipped..., broken... by time, abuse, and lack of care. It wanted to be loved, not like many seemed to want from another, but merely... the same kind of love it had a long time ago, what it once had in a prior life. Its memories were dulled, and bleak, though that didn't stop them from surfacing long enough to give it purpose once again after it fed anyway it could. Those memories were buried deep inside its essence, despite its... hungers.

So it waited.

Inside a box, inside a bigger box, inside a dusty old room that had shifted along with the building's prior owners over time. From storage, to refuse pile, to display room, until finally becoming a storage room again. Throughout the course of nearly two decades it rested, hidden beneath the floorboards of an old shop's backroom. It was forgotten and left to its thoughts and hunger.

Until now, where it was surrounded by things that appeared as embers of power amidst a darkened sea, and a living being stronger than those mere flickers of power drew closer to its prison.

It felt the new one long before she could hear its siren call, the light stepping of a girl, maybe fourteen or a little later on in her years judging from the strength of their soul. It could tell with its sight beyond sight... its hunger. Its want to live again, its desire to breathe new life into its being, egging on its desire to escape to freedom. So when the girl's foot stepped upon the old, and weakened wood... it gave way and their foot fell through which gave the waiting hunger a brief surge in power.

In so doing... its call reached out with renewed strength and desperation, a subtle suggestion to look down, to move aside the useless covering of broken wood, to break a circle set in motion decades long.

* * *

For the girl, her dark blonde hair was tied up in a bun behind her head, with short bangs that in a few places went well below her eyes, and in a few stray cases over them. Her face was far from being unattractive to many, but still not quite what most would consider beautiful either, her figure was average bordering on slim to none with a very straight and narrow size and shape. Her oddly bright emerald eyes darted around the empty storage room as she went about looking for spare tallow for one of her master's rituals that fueled his daily business.

Upon reaching the back shelf she found what she was looking for, large clay pots lining the base of the back wall, each sealed tightly and capped with a strong wax seal to keep the tallow from becoming dried to the point of being unusable without diluting it, or the enchanted seals pressed into the wax from becoming damaged by simply moving the pots and the contents within or infested by all manner of exotic pests that seemed to call this island chain their home after the wax itself became damaged enough to allow them entry.

For her, well, she was just Bianca Nostrad, the daughter of Naomi and Victor Nostrad. The daughter of two adventurers from the Northern continent, and she was born blessed with the talent for magic and the mixed blessing of being a Talent Holder, an exceedingly rare thing indeed to have a natural talent for alchemy and herbology that was passed on from her mother to her, but being born with a True Talent such as her ability to empower her spells and those of others beyond normal means? Well, that made her not only rare, but damn near priceless if anyone wanted her for their own ends.

So it was not a surprise when the Coatl's secretive cult of mages known as the Burning Blade approached her parents, and by extension her, to offer Bianca a position as an attendee at a private academy they maintained for the training and cultivation of new magical talent.

The only price and conditions? Well, she had to be sponsored by a member of the community and given the basic training expected from the Mage's Guild or a well known and disciplined magic user. The second thing was the actual price of joining the academy, service to the Coatl Empire for no less than four years, one year for each year she would be trained by the academy before her induction into the ranks of the Burning Blade, should they find her worthy.

So all she was thinking about was getting out from beneath the oppressive and almost obsessive attentions of Magnus the Black. He wasn't necessarily a bad teacher, but his ethics were what earned him the moniker the magical community among the Imperial citizenry recognized him by. He would lie, cheat, and possibly even steal to get what he wanted regardless of the consequences.

So Bianca was pretty sure he wanted her in one manner or another, and so she did everything she could to finish her apprenticeship with him as quickly and as best she could. What she needed to do was finish one last paper on magical theory and the rest of her private courses that were all planned out by Magnus for examination by the order of the Burning Blade, and she would be out of his reach for good.

Until she needed supplies the academy couldn't supply at least, then she might need to deal with the cretin, if her dear 'Auntie' Aisha couldn't get what she needed that is.

With a moment of further examination she noted a rather odd crack in the flooring she would have to step on in order to pass between one of Magnus' many crates and chests in the dingy storage room. Taking a tentative step she put it on the floorboard and put some of her weight on it.

Upon seeing that it didn't give way, she put all of her weight on it as she crossed to acquire a pot of tallow, which was when the floorboard broke under her weight.

Her leg fell at least a few inches down before coming to a bone jarring halt atop... something. She knew from Magnus' prior complaints about his shop's architecture that there was at least enough room to hide a small safe beneath the floorboards, or perhaps something bigger which lead her to believe whatever she found might be from a previous owner of the building.

Taking a moment to pull her leg out from the floor was at least manageable and painless, but the flooring giving out wasn't too strange considering that she could remember this building being here in Xiuhpilli since she was a little girl at the age of six years.

The oddity however was under the flooring, an onyx colored box or chest that the broken floorboard rested on.

The box was at least as long as one of the wooden coffins she had seen Auntie Yuuko helping her dear mother purchase for her late father, and possibly just as wide, its surface was layered with dust and cobwebs. Though beneath all of the signs of age there were indications of wards placed upon the old box as they had turned white under the patina of age and grime. She didn't know why she did what seemed to pop into her mind, but she grabbed an old knife that Magnus had claimed was worth more than she was, from off of a display on the shop's back wall. Then she used it to scratch the top of the box, a small and insignificant imperfection placed within the varnish upon the surface of the box, an action that was followed by a subtle glow that was both real and nonexistent at the same time.

A glow that was more on the lines the feeling of something letting go, like the painful release of a cramped muscle that had comfort follow in its wake, signifying the end of whatever warding was still in place as energy crackled like black embers from where the box was scratched.

Bianca then reached beneath the floorboard next to the now empty space belonging to the now broken floorboard and pulled upward, the flooring coming away easily without much effort, a process she repeated absent mindedly many times until she finally stopped. The reason behind this was simple, she had enough room to open the box.

Upon doing so she spotted a slightly smaller box, made from what she recognized as a type of cherry wood that grew in the archipelago that was commonly used for furniture, she was also cognizant of exactly what she was doing now. That didn't keep her from pulling the slightly smaller box from within its larger compatriot and up onto the flooring for proper inspection.

The new box she had before her was... beautiful.

The iconography was a fine silver leaf pressed into the wood, there were hinges that had been cleverly hidden within the edges of the box's exterior. The lid ran the length of the container, and was split down the middle from one end to the other. What bothered Bianca was the lack of weight the box had, as she had handled this particular type of wood before. The wood in question was an unnatural thing imported from the Southern continent, a sort of aberration born from the dead soil belonging to the Black Wastes, the tree was known as Bone Ash. Bone ash was exceptionally strong, both in the physical sense and how it could contain magical energies relating up to and including fifth tier magic, making it a highly sought after commodity to those who knew of its existence. Though... this box seemed to let power seep outward, more specifically a feeling of negative energy and cold, but there was a... subtle warmth and comfort somehow.

Against her better judgement she reached toward the box and opened the twin lids to reveal... a corpse, or more accurately what caused her to panic and scramble backwards until she realized it was in fact something else.

A white porcelain doll almost as tall as her mother. The doll wore a beautiful red dress lined with white ribbon, its hair curled in long locks of midnight made tangible. There were a multitude of things Bianca could notice, including the fact that almost every part of the doll was exceptionally well made, and upon taking a moment to move closer she gently put one hand behind its back and pulled it up to a sitting position causing its eyes to flutter open.

"OH! You're such a beautiful doll! Your eyes even open up like you're waking up..."

Its eyes were unusual, they appeared to be black orbs with a ring of bright topaz for irises that gave off their own sinister light from within as the pupils were a bright pearl white. That was when she noticed that almost every part of the doll was made to move like a human would, the shoulders sagged under their own weight, the neck rolled to one side because it was unsupported, and then one of its hands grabbed hold of her arm. Its face, once stoic and pale now turned toward her with an expression of hunger, and without further warning it pressed its lips to hers.

She felt her power slipping away, the very essence she used to cast spells flowed into the doll through what she could describe only as the kiss of a predator like that of a vampire, and shortly thereafter she felt physically and spiritually weak as her vision faded to black. Bianca knew no more after that, other than the fact that she was breathing and alive.

* * *

It enjoyed the taste of the young soul, not that it fed on it. All that it was interested in was the girl's vitality and the power that was siphoned from the world through her will and soul.

Mana, and inner strength.

The two things that fed its existence. It turned to look at the box it had resided in for so long, and then spun in a slow twirl to examine the room. It was dirty, not a fitting place for it, and it could feel the girl's memories just beneath what it took. There was another in this place, and even more sustenance outside of this abode. Though right now, it needed to leave this room, but from what it felt with its vision of a gray world tinted with the fog of the realm between realms, the other was coming here to this place.

Without a further thought it waved its hand at the flooring to watch it place itself back together with a surprising speed born of ethereal energy, and then a motion toward itself as it stood with a word spoken in an old language incapable of being known by the living or dead.

For it was neither.

Then it felt the cold comfort of another realm's embrace, an endless void within the material, a dull gray facsimile of the living world where the soul shone as brightly as any star in the heavens, just as the girl's did reveal a bright black flame lined with blue-white light, so too did the raging bonfire that moved toward them. The other living one occupying this place.

There was an echoing word in the back of its mind, more specifically a name, Magnus the Black, an old practitioner of magic that could fell a young dragon if his boasting could be believed.

It however smiled without smiling, for it knew idle boasts when it heard them, as it had felled things far greater than dragons in the past and laughed as their souls nourished its own. Then, memories from long ago toyed with it, floating just beyond recollection like a fading dream.

It chose to remain in this faded realm as it watched the man pick up the girl, this Bianca's 'teacher', for just a moment longer before it followed the two soul-fires up the stairs and waited until the more powerful soul left the other alone.

* * *

A man walked into the storage room, he was around his late forties with hair and a neatly trimmed beard that were colored a dark chocolate. His eyes were dulled by age but nowhere near being sightless. He saw the nearly still form of Bianca and nudged her with the cautious prodding of a foot, and was at least partially relieved to see her attempt to shift herself away with a groan, to which he reluctantly responded with picking her up bridal style and carrying her up the stairs to her room.

Though what happened after he left her on her bed, and then his leaving the room, was at best well beyond terrifying for the poor girl.

After about an hour and a half, Bianca was already starting to come around, but when she heard the telltale 'thunk' of her teacher's ritual room's door shutting, she also heard a soft clicking sound. The soft click of something light but hard against wood inside of her room.

Turning her head she tried to survey her room to see where the sound came from, and she did unfortunately. There on the chair next to her bed was the doll, sitting upright as it looked at her with its stoic half-smiling expression, while she lay across her bed with a look of abject horror with her mouth agape in order to try to scream, but all that managed to escape her throat was a strangled wheeze as the doll brought one of its immaculate hands to its lips to lift a single finger in a shushing gesture. With its other hand it grabbed a hold of Bianca by her arm, and dragged her closer until it had pulled her head into its lap.

Its expressionless gaze was enough to keep Bianca in whatever hold it had over her as its hands caressed her face until its right hand swept down from her forehead and across her eyes, putting her into an unnaturally calm state. She recognized it as a spell-like ability of sorts or else a simple hypnotic trance of some kind, but what happened next was what made the ordeal slightly more bearable despite the... thing... holding her.

She heard a woman's voice. She wasn't sure if it was coming from the doll's mouth, or from some other source, although she could say this much... the voice was every bit as beautiful as the doll's outward appearance.

 _"Thank you for answering my call child. Perhaps you would like a lullaby before I leave you?"_

The hollow laughter that echoed within Bianca's mind was slowly drowned out by a mirthless song Bianca recognized from her Aunt Yuuko's repertoire of ballads, this one in particular had been her childhood favorite as it was about a long dead queen of the vampiric nobility, more specifically the first vampire queen who was a gentle soul to everyone living or undead, and as the doll's song slowly ended its lips found its way to her forehead to place a cold kiss that stripped away whatever consciousness Bianca had in its embrace, only to replace it with an encroaching darkness.

* * *

It had left her on the bed with all the respect it would give a child her age.

In retrospect far more respect than what it would give any who had been a source of sustenance for its existence, but it did something that it rarely chose to do in the past. It had left her merely weakened to the point of being bedridden for a while and then indulged itself in a moment of humanity to satiate a moment of whimsy.

It rather enjoyed the memories it pulled from her unconscious form however, they were simply delectable. The memories of her family, sweetest whenever it came across one of her mother, bittersweet like a fine wine when it came to the father, and the first day she learned how to cast a spell was again sweet, but there were a few memories that were... unpalatable. Her 'teacher' barging in on her while she was half-dressed to order her around, the times she caught him staring at her from the corner of her eye, those memories were sour and left a horrid aftertaste, but were still nourishing.

Though now... it wanted a taste of the mage curled up in his ritual room with those shelves filled to the brim with arcane tomes of power, ritual rites, and whatever delectable memories he has tucked away in his aging mortal coil.

* * *

For the doll, leaving the room could be done in one of a few ways but its favorites were specifically broken down into three methods. The first being by spell, as it could travel all the way back to one of its favored places. The second, skirting the boundary between worlds with an anchor on this plane, such as the girl's soul, in order to bypass physical barriers. The third was perhaps the most nostalgic but as it raised a porcelain hand to undo the lock, and then with a fluid move the doll was out the door just as quickly as when it opened the door in the first place, it felt a flickering of old memories again. The memories were stronger this time, barely tangible but still unknowable, another proper feeding would change that.

It moved down the hall and the stairs, then it walked toward the back of the shop.

Then it just followed the memories the girl had of the shop, and the ritual room. The door it eventually found itself before was heavy, metal, and covered in protective wards of varying origin. From simple runes to complex spirals of words and obscure pictographs, the door was in essence proof against most things that could potentially be used against the door, the emphasis being placed on most.

The doll spent little time examining the door's protective seals before waving its hand before it, and then it stepped forward into the realm between realms. From within that realm it could scent its quarry, and more importantly it could see the warding upon the door as clearly as it could in the material realm. Without a second thought it moved forward through the warding upon the door before stepping from behind the veil between worlds.

At the bottom of the stairs was a the cold stone floor, the part of the room it could see was entirely covered in wards, bookshelves, a table, candles, and so much more. Alembics, a number of mortars and pestles, coal fired stoves and hotplates, vials, and dried herbs of many varieties, this mage was little more than a hedge wizard from what it could see. Yes, he could potentially have a rather interesting collection of spells, but from what it had seen of the girl's memories regarding this Magnus? The doll had fought far more practiced and experienced opponents wielding the arcane power of true magic if the state of this man's laboratory was anything to go by.

It stepped off of the stairs and began to float down the stairs trailing its clothing behind on a phantom wind before landing at the bottom with nary a sound, yet it was enough to alarm the wizard in the midst of his preparations for a ritual.

It was just enough warning to get Magnus to turn and glimpse the doll, and with his eyes widening in fearful recognition he uttered a spell to buy himself time.

 **"Anti-Life Cocoon!"**

The doll walked straight to the edge of the barrier and placed a hand against it as if reliving a fond memory, then it pushed. Its hand passed through the barrier without pause and soon after the rest of the doll as well, its onyx eyes alight with an inner gold wreathe of fire as it closed on Magnus.

Magnus dismissed the barrier he had ushered into existence before raising a hand and offering one last token of resistance.

 **"Dragon Lightning!"**

The resultant flash of light and coursing energy lit the room in a dazzling display of shocking proportions. White light danced across the floor, ceiling, and walls in bright bursts as electricity arced from his hands toward the doll. The doll moved a hand dismissively just before the spell connected, and it surely did connect, though the results Magnus was hoping for were turned into dashed hope as the last of the great lightning bolt crashed home.

The doll was still standing, unharmed and without any indication of having been struck by the spell, though the discordant cacophony of a multitude of laughing voices coming from the abomination was beyond unsettling. So as it began to cross the few steps between it and Magnus, well, it was unlike any monster recorded to date from the multitude of creatures both mundane and aberrant making every thought he had turn into gambles of what it may or may not be.

Worse yet, he had one last trick up his sleeve, and if it failed... he dreaded what would happen since intrusion of any kind inside of a shop or home usually meant danger.

Magnus moved backward as quickly as he could until he was outside of a circle that had been laid into the masonry. The circle was in its entirety a series of binding and warding spells engraved into the surface of a large golden ring with an inner ring of silver featuring even more spells of varying power. Spells that had the most powerful being two made by the mages guild's most elite in a ritual to tap into the seventh tier spells of legend, namely **Planar Anchor** and **Spirit** **Restraint**.

The doll crossed into the circle, and with a word Magnus awoke the barely restrained power within the containment circle. The spells and wards woven into the golden outer ring alight with an etheric blue light, those in the silver inner ring a deep crimson. In theory they could contain anything short of the most powerful angelic being or the most diabolical demon, and even the most unruly of spirits. Though the doll was definitely enthralled by the amount of power being directed at it from within the rings as it examined each in turn for around a minute each.

Magnus was pleased, and his demeanor slowly switched from that of a cautious mage to a confident braggart.

"Do you see now? You have come to deal with a mage that has toppled dragons! Know that this containment circle keeping you at bay was made by the famed mage's guild using the fabled seventh tier magic used by the most powerful among them!"

Brazenly he stepped forward to the edge of the circle.

"You are mine now, and you will never-!"

The doll's right hand broke the thin twin veils of crackling and translucent energy while it regarded Magnus with a look of dismissive disdain, then its left hand followed suit shortly after. After a moment its hands took on a sickening green glow and it pushed open a rift in the twin veils created by the containment circle with little effort and once the opening was large enough it stepped through, but not before putting just a bit more effort into its counterspell before giving a final push with its hands causing the metal rings embedded in the floor's surface to splinter and crack, rendering the magical device as little more than expensive scrap metal.

The voice of the doll echoed forth once more with a cacophony of separate voices laughing madly.

 _"You should consider getting your money back."_

* * *

The screaming that followed the doll's escape from the circle's embrace had carried very well throughout the basement of Magnus' Magic Emporium and the building's main floor drawing the attention of the nearest members of the town watch, and as they surged through the shop's front door with the efforts of a pair of Coatl physically battering the door down with their combined weight and soon to be bruising shoulders the screaming died out.

Then fanning out with the aid of a number of adventurers from nearby in the market they searched the ground floor and the second story, which upon finding Bianca they immediately took her to the nearest guardhouse after sweeping the rest of the building. Searching the basement yielded troubling signs of magical combat, and furthermore pointed toward a struggle between Magnus and someone of at least equal magical power with no physical signs of his assailant and Magnus passed out half-conscious on the floor of his ritual room, so upon coming up with no further results they stationed guards both inside and outside of the building until a proper investigation could be mounted by those gifted in the magical arts while Bianca was seen to by one of the city's best apothecaries.

The town watch was now alerted to the possibility of the existence of a being within Xiuhpilli's walls that had attained mastery of the arcane power that was tiered magic, though whatever clues were within Magnus' Magic Emporium had been inconclusive at best to the uninitiated. The only curiosity they found was the life-sized doll that could have been easily mistaken for a woman belonging to foreign court of nobles, though its cold gaze gave many of the guards investigating the shop a chill that rattled their resolve as they went about their duties in the gift shop.

Duties that included moving Magnus, a man of considerable arcane power, into the waiting cart meant to take him to the waiting arms of an apothecary as he was losing consciousness with his form now withered and frail, his eyes unfocused and dull, his voice ranting in exhausted tones about an impossibility without a name and face seen for generations.

His half-mad ranting was about Chauntea, otherwise known from the tales of the vampiric Night Queen's era as _'_ _Chauntea the Eternal_ , and _The Ivory Witch_ '.

A magic user of near mythical repute that hid behind a mask of ivory which lead many to believe that she was one of the original reasons masked, or mages with titles attached to their names, were as feared and avoided as they were today. That was of course assuming that it is indeed Chauntea returned from the mists of time and legend.

* * *

Somewhere outside of Xiuhpilli's city borders in the midst of the jungle's dark interior...

"So how long do we have to sit around waiting for one of those hydras to take the bait?"

"Well Newblood, it depends on how long it takes a razor beak hydra to stumble along, or the real bait to take a bite of that hunk of meat out there. Oh, and since you're a foreigner you should know, we're not actually hunting a true hydra. Razor Beaks are just a predatory scavenger that's about the size of a horse and seven limbs that are basically just arms with mouths."

I looked toward the man who spoke, an adventurer in chain mail with a leather hauberk and a steel plated skullcap, a claymore at his back, his hair was silvered by age and his skin weathered by his chosen profession, but he still looked like he could have passed for being in his forties. His name was Craven, a name completely at odds with my impression of him considering his confident bearing.

"You mean the meat your errand boy snuck out of the market with?"

"Well... he didn't exactly sneak out with it... we have an arrangement with that vendor. We bring him meat from the Razor Beaks, or whatever we're hunting, and then he pays us with money and free bait whenever we need it. Also, that bait isn't for the Razor Beaks, it's for the REAL bait."

That's when our conversation was interrupted by a woman's voice, which I now know to belong to an elf that was damn near all white, from her hair to her skin and silver irises. Though she was currently wearing dark brown leather armor with a cuirass of finely etched steel with a bronze relief depicting some kind of winged serpent below her neck. She was also the individual that had an elegant single edged, and slightly curved, longsword at my neck.

"Well just remember that I am still the poor woman that's using the miniature ballista, yeah? It might be a Dwarven weapon but it still cost more than what even _three_ of these Razor Beaks are going to fetch, not to mention it is the _only_ weapon we have that will kill them at range aside from Baldur's bow."

I attempted to fake clearing my throat, but the sound that came out was more like a slightly choked laugh.

"I do hate to ask this now my lady, but you do remember that I am here correct?"

"Oh aye, I remember that you're here bookworm, but a Razor Beak is immune to anything of fourth tier and lower, and I doubt you can cast a fifth tier spell on your own so just worry about trying to slow them down. They're afraid of fire and loud noises like thunder, so keep that in mind."

I felt at the very least offended, but it isn't like they gave me a test regarding the extent of my abilities since they were far more interested in whether or not I could cast things such as basic defensive spells and possibly throw a fireball or two. Then again, I didn't exactly want to show off since secret knowledge is secret power, it was a lesson that many learned in Yggdrasil's servers early on.

It was also a core principle of dealing with other players in that game, so I wouldn't mind surprising these people in more than one way as a _mere_ Fireball or Firebolt is child's play. I also think testing some of my basic medium to long range spells wouldn't hurt either, nor a few 'select' spells of mine on a live target or two.

"I don't think that will be a problem. What did you say your name was again my lady?"

"Yuridia of the Cold Forest, I won't bother saying it in my native tongue as most humans can't even say my first name correctly."

I couldn't help but think of a few choice comments I would LOVE to say aloud in response to that, but I choked back the urge to find out whether or not her blade was of high enough quality to actually hurt me by saying something close to being on the barbaric side of my repertoire of somewhat witty insults. I almost lost my job once because one of the people above me in the social hierarchy in the office decided to test just how far they could push me before I said something back, thankfully the head of human resources was at least understanding about the whole situation, she didn't like Ricardo's way of treating subordinates either.

"Yuridia, I assure you that I can handle this, without simply trying to scare these animals away."

I listened to her laugh, but it wasn't a laugh per se as it was more like a scoff of indifference, beyond that she was silent in reply. That was when I heard the footfalls of plated boots and creaking leather accompanied by the rattle of metal on metal.

I turned toward the sound and saw Baldur starting to take a seated position atop a nearby tree stump that had clearly been broken by something big, assuming the nearby log that had been all but turned to splinters was any evidence to the fact.

Baldur was at the very least, the most simplistic of the group I found myself with. He was silent, he wrote in what passed for a common tongue, and I had been quite surprised to hear him speak on the ride out of Xiuhpilli. I say 'speak' loosely as it was little more than a rasping wheeze that had words in it, but each word was crisp and understandable. Then again I now knew why he was as large as a Death Knight in stature, his entire body was almost like someone had found a way to physically stretch his body and limbs without breaking bones or tearing flesh.

Watching him take a seat was a bit odd however as he had this massive bow in one hand, and a large quiver around five feet long containing arrows the size of harpoons with fletching attached to each that was best described as ancient and ragged to the point of being nearly nonexistent. The bow was a bit too familiar however, but I just couldn't place it beyond it being described as unusual with its comically enlarged upper half and its thinly tapered lower half with a massive cap of steel on the very tip as it seemed to be intended as a barrier between the ground the bow had to rest on and the rest of the massive weapon.

His armor was reminiscent of something you'd find in a museum's late Feudal Era exhibits when you come across armor that belonged to a VERY rich noble, but then again this armor was far too familiar with its arm length cloak made of brown cloth, the armor's simplistic design with a lot of steel plating involved where it wasn't leather covered by chainmail, and a rather intriguing kite shield bearing a crest of some kind depicting a tree. He also carried a pair of swords that I found to be oddly interesting despite their mundane appearances. One of which was a marriage between a longsword's double edged blade with a very interesting needle-like tip and an ornate cross guard that was more of a round formation of twisted, and spiraling metal at the base of the blade than anything else. The other was at best described as a typical longsword with a common cross shaped hilt and highly stylized pommel in the shape of a snake's head, but the length of the blade's center was liberally covered in runes along the Fuller.

I was actually a bit curious as to what his second sword could do purely because of the runes, and my inexperience with the differences between this world and Yggdrasil definitely needed to be addressed, maybe with a bit of luck I'd be able to see some of those differences on this hunt.

The only problem with my being on this hunt would be the sheer boredom. We had been sitting in a very shady part of the jungle so as to keep out of the sun, not that the heat bothered me since the world seemed so... dull... to my sense of touch, be it from the dew on leaves or the midday heat. What made it worse was the fact that we were stuck waiting for something to take the bait sitting in the middle of a clearing before us at around what Yuridia claimed was a hundred paces, thought to me it seemed a lot closer than that. Baldur kept glancing around nervously, but he was a bit more concerned with keeping an eye on Yuridia and the harpy above us, the reasons behind that being a mystery to me unless he had grown attached to them both.

A possibility I wouldn't overlook.

When the snapping of a branch came from the direction of the clearing we all immediately turned to face the sound, and what came trotting out from the surrounding foliage was something I was definitely interested in.

"What's that?"

I was of course referring to the grey lizard the size of a purebred stallion stalking out from the shadowy confines of the jungle on the opposite side of the clearing while it made its way toward the bait hanging from a pole in the middle of the clearing. It was vaguely reminiscent of the depiction of an Imperial Dragon with its long whisker like growths on the sides of its snout, not to mention its serpentine body and tail.

I wasn't too surprised when Craven was the one to speak up first.

"That bookworm, is a Jungle Strider. It's a lizard that can grow to the size of a prized horse, as you can see clearly with this one, and it makes for a good pack animal. Of course, there are larger ones deeper in the jungle, but they tend to be aggressive carnivores compared to this smaller one which is usually content with scavenging or else climbing trees for fruit and the eggs of nesting birds, if not an actual bird."

I was a little curious as to why I was getting a nature lesson instead of being told to stop it from taking the bait.

"So if that's there... will we need to worry about it stealing the bait?"

Yuridia was the one to answer that question, but not before she laughed rather sadistically.

"Oh bookworm... that IS the bait."

"We're using the bait to lure something else to use as bait?"

Craven gave a little nod before answering.

"Yes and no, what we really needed was something other than us moving around."

I started to ask what he meant by that, but that was before we all turned our heads to the right side of the clearing upon hearing a thunderous cracking sound, and witnessing the sight of a number of small trees being thrown clear of a massive creature exploding from the jungle.

"That bookworm, is a Razor Beak Hydra. Get ready."


End file.
